Who Will Ever Know
by Beldam
Summary: Bats can't break. Just like you can't fissure the darkness or cut open the night, there are certain things that can never fall apart. But then again, there is the lightning and the sun-so maybe it's not a question of 'whether it can happen', but 'when.'
1. Chapter 1

The Joker took a leap between First and Corioulus street. His mouth was sticky with the taste of iron and he kept licking his lips to ease his thirst. He tried to straighten out his purple jacket as he ran—he refused to be seen like this, with his blood smeared upwards across his pure-white face and his suit hanging off him in filthy tatters—but the shoulder seams were done for and it took all the energy he had to keep from losing one of his sleeves. The wind rushed into him, drying the sweat on his brow and making off with the flower on his lapel.

The flash of shattered headlights practically blinded him as he scrambled across the road. He did not know where all these damned cars were coming from at this obscene hour of the night, but he did know that one just nicked him in the moment before he hurled a rock, which he had been carrying for the last fifteen blocks, at the windscreen. The car swerved onto the sidewalk and took out a shop window and two street signs, people ran this way and that in screaming terror, a woman actually fainted, and he had to admit, it would have been pretty hilarious if he were not in such a sour mood. But he was and it wasn't. In fact, if it weren't for his left arm being snapped rather cleanly in two and the blood presently making its way into his esophagus, he might have brought a bigger rock. Whenever he moved, pain shot up his shattered limb and down the length of his spine-the sort of unnamable, excruciating pain that most sadomasochists only _dream_ of. Honestly, he was just lucky his legs weren't broken.

But he didn't dwell on it. He didn't have the time.

Not when the Bat was on his tail.

Usually, he just decided to forego the whole 'dramatic chase scene' deal that all the other villains of Gotham seemed to have oh-so-much fun with, and sort of just hang around at the scene of the crime until the Batman showed up and they could exchange a bit of witty banter, because if anyone asked him, that was probably the thing he reveled in the most. If someone decided to make a chart featuring the ratio of the time Joker engaged in witty banter to the time he spent killing people, (he would gladly consider not killing someone if they agreed to make that chart. Maybe) they would be surprised to find that he spent at least twice as much time doing the former than the latter. Admittedly, this was probably because killing people was sort of like the thing people did when they were bored and needed a hobby, and really, it was a frustratingly quick process at times. Humans were miserable meatsacks at the best of times and annoying obtrusions at the worst, made of sticks and straw and other fragile, earthly things, more fit for entertainment than for sport. But the less time he spent on maiming innocent bystanders and their mothers, the more time he had to spend with his favourite black-panties vigilante.

But tonight, he was no different than the rest of his pathetic, unforgivably unstylish peers. Whatever they seemed to see in Batman all the time, for Joker it was a first. Never in his entire life—at least, the life that mattered—had he looked in the Batman's eyes and, for one stark moment, seen himself. Not like that.

He licked his lips again, swallowed down sticky saliva and blood. God, he was thirsty.

He looked at the sky, a rolling, unhappy black, and a drop of water fell into his eye. That actually made him chuckle a little as he finally collapsed into a heap in an alley between 'who knows' and 'what do I care'. Car lights flashed across the entrance, occasionally turning the blackness of the built up grime either completely sallow or ruby red. The hollow of the alley made everything on the outskirts sound louder, as though he was that stupid kid sitting on the windowsill, looking on the city, and thinking he could find the ocean in a shell. Thunder rolled, born from the roar of streetlights and city life, and echoed skywards. The Joker saw the silhouettes of gargoyles on the rooftops when lightning fissured the sky, saw the way they hung off the ledge tremulously as though they were deciding whether or not to jump.

Jump, he dared them in wavering silence. When you hit the ground, you'll still have fewer pieces than me.

He closed his eyes, too tired to keep them open but too awake to sleep. In the ground he heard the rattling hush of the subway beneath him, felt the entire planet shudder against its speed. The rain got harder, feeling more like prickles of glass on the skin and sounding like stones as it pelted the windows and dumpsters and dirt that made up the alley. The stench of car exhaust, of cigarette smoke, of human filth and rot, it all was pushed down and disappeared beneath the weight of the sky pressing down. The steps passing by the alley mouths became quicker and more urgent. A car let out a long, blaring howl. A child laughed.

He thought of the Batman.

Remembered the coldness in those black-framed eyes that looked down cruelly from above. Remembered being looked at as though he didn't even exist, though those taloned hands had him held up by the neck.

Remembered his breathlessness and his relief when he was dropped off the ledge and surrendered to gravity and the ground.

Remembered nothing.

Joker looked up again, this time not seeing a thing. He tried to smirk, to giggle, to laugh, but his ribs pushed back into his lungs and he gurgled on the blood rising in his throat. It really was amusing, in a perverse sort of way. After all that taunting and mockery, after the all the effort he'd put into forcing the Batman to realize that the two of them were, at their cores, the same, now that the bat seemed to be showing his true colours it wasn't half as fun as he would have thought.

In a strange, lucid moment, he opened his mouth and let raindrops pool in the back of his throat and slide down his lips. Water glittered on his eyelashes, green like his hair, and it looked like dew on a field. If he could have, he would have stayed. He would have just lied there in the dirt and broken glass and drunk in the sky and the city for the rest of forever. But he couldn't. He _couldn't_.

The wind let out a long, lonely howl and for a second there he thought he heard the rush of a cape batting away the rain. He wheezed—he didn't want to get up anymore—and got his working limbs reluctantly under him. His tie slid off from around his neck and fell in a loop on the ground. His ribs shifted inside him again, practically fissuring all the way down, and they pulled back and tried to puncture his heart. As thought I wasn't broken enough already, he joked to himself. Which ended up being pointless, since what was a joke if there was no one to laugh at it?

Hurpling as though he was a puppet cut at the strings, he pushed away from the ground and headed off in to whatever place would have him. In moments he was a smear of white and green in the torrent and the night, and just like magic, he was there—

-then he was gone.

… … … … … … … …

Hey again, everyone! Back by popular demand, it's the Batman and the Beldam!

After getting a message asking if I would write more joker, batman fics (you know who you are, miss!) I opened a word document and just started typing to see if anything would come of it. And thusly was this born. I got so much positive feedback from Indigo, I worry that I won't be able to live up to the hype, but I guess there's only one way to find out.

Thanks for reading the first chapter to a story that one hopes will entertain you.


	2. Chapter 2

Batman watched the Joker from atop a dim, grey apartment building, hardly breathing. Towering above the rest of the city, deaf to the cars howling through the streets, blind to the gliding, mesmerizing glare of lights, he would have thought he was the sole resident of Earth. At least, had he not been staring down into the blood-smeared face of another. So, then, he thought wryly, it was just the two of them. They were all that could be seen of humanity for miles around. He let out a sound that tried to be amused and failed. And what a sordid pair they were.

The vigilante sat crouched between the gargoyles, leaning forward into the blinding rush of wind and rain, and felt as though at any point he would tip into the darkness writhing hungrily below. He didn't move—he didn't know if he could anymore. His limbs were numb, muscles chilled through to the bone. But when he lifted his hands, the blood drenching his gauntlets sliding away without even leaving a stain, he saw that they were shaking.

Sucking in a thick, high breath, he looked back down to the alley that the Joker had collapsed in only moments before. For a second he panicked—_panicked_—when the madman wasn't there anymore. He hadn't even left a smear where he'd been bleeding into the asphalt. It was as though he had really disappeared. Batman hissed when he tried to get his legs under him, searching for the nerves and muscles and membranes that would tell them both to _move_, but they refused and he lost his footing and toppled into the alley. His arm shot out reflexively and he snatched onto the railing of the old fire escape on the side of the apartment. It was too much to ask that that it stop his fall. Rusted and old, the metal snapped like a twig, letting out a long, agonized groan while it bent and peeled away from the stairs, and Batman continued to tumble through the air like a stone. He gritted his teeth and made grab for his grappling gun, but the railing held on the last step and his descent came to an abrupt stop. He didn't feel his arm come out of its socket, but he heard the pop of cartilage separating from bone and felt the numbness go from superficial to all too real. Letting out a harsh, animal sound as he did, he swung himself onto the fire escape landing—a mere three stories above the ground—and then his legs were out from under him again and he couldn't stand. The fire escape rattled when his body fell against it, rattled so hard that he was sure that even the building it was attached to shook, along with all the people holed up inside it.

Rain pelted him, sliding down his lips but not easing his thirst. He looked up, saw a light turn on in a window, saw shapes shift across the drawn curtains before it went dark inside again. And then he closed his eyes and tried to remember what he was doing here.

Every night was the same. Every encounter the same words, same plans, same amount of work to bring it all falling down in pieces. Tonight had been no different. Batman couldn't really say what the Joker had been doing before he had arrived—you stopped really cataloguing the exact nature and level of any given atrocity after a time. You stopped thinking, "That madman! He must be stopped!" and only ever said it out loud when you wanted either to seem absurdly sincere or blatantly ironic. In some strange, broken way, you stopped caring about what you were stopping, about the lives you were saving, about the evils you were bringing to an end. All that really mattered was that you did _something_. And so that's what Batman had done.

The two men had met on a rooftop, splayed out as shadows in the moonlight and pitch night pouring in from all directions. The air had been a pungent mix of smoke and joker venom. A few blocks down, people screamed while sirens blared towards them.

The Joker had been smiling. He was _always _smiling. His green, bristly hair—which he was starting to grow out—had been mussed, and so he'd fixed it in a mirror he inexplicably carried in his shirt. There had been blood on his shoes, and he'd looked at them consideringly before he put his hands in the pockets of that old, violet jacket he was always wearing, and started talking in that longwinded, well-spoken, Joker way. But for once, he hadn't been talking to Batman. The mad man held up his arms to the sky, the stars, the city, the headlights, spun on his heel, laughing mirthlessly as he explained into existence the worthlessness of the world. Batman didn't move the whole while, content with listening until the madman had nothing left to say, and so wouldn't miss the teeth the vigilante would knock out of him. There had been a time—maybe days ago, maybe a century—in which those speeches had been infuriating. They deliberately spat on everything Batman fought for, everything he loved. As the occasional fights with the Joker slowly moved into routine, they'd become a bearable, unavoidable irritation, like the infrequent pricked finger you got when fixing up a seam. After all, the Joker could believe whatever he pleased about the world, but that would never make it right. It could never shake the strength of Batman's convictions.

So when did it happen?

Batman listened, hung on every warped and ugly word, but felt not an ounce of indignation.

When, during which fight, during which drive to Arkham, during which of those endless list of mindless atrocities, did his mind stop revolting against whatever it was the Joker had to say?

While standing there on that roof, looking out on everything he'd ever cared about, everything he'd ever known, it came to him not in a sudden, bright flash of horrible revelation, but as a slow, creeping whimper in his chest.

When had those 'immovable' convictions of his stirred?

The Joker had his back to him, so there would never be anyone to tell him how he looked in that moment. That was for the best. It would have been even something a madman would have been unable to laugh at.

But then the Joker turned at him and his smile-that too-constant, too-happy, too-red smile—was full of pity. Maybe he had caught that moment of realization in Batman's stance, or in the set of his lips, or in his eyes, but that didn't matter. That didn't change what he said.

The wind swept between them, tousling the bat's cape and the clown's coat, an intruder on their world. In the distance, light shivered on the horizon, threatening lightening instead of day, while streetlamps flickered down below, moments from going out.

"We could go on like this forever."

It wasn't the first time the Joker had said it. Even if he tried, the vigilante wouldn't be able to recount all the instances the madman had used just those words. But, whether it was because of the way Joker's green eyes glittered in his white face, or the way Batman's black clad hands gripped tightly onto nothing, or because sometimes _things just change_, this time it was different. Standing on opposite ends of everything, in the middle of the night, in the middle of autumn, in the cold, uncaring city where they had both come into existence, for the first time, Batman understood.

Forever was Gotham. Forever was his parents. Forever was everything Bruce had ever known and all the things he would never get to know. Forever was the Earth and the Sun and the Universe. Forever was life and death and whatever hell came after. And though, by human standards, it was impossible for anything to last that long, Batman had the feeling that he and the Joker could really do it. They could really keep on fighting _forever._

"No." Batman remembered saying that. He remembered whispering it from between his teeth, hardly moving his lips to accommodate the word.

The Joker laughed at him bemusedly and shook his head, straightening his garish green tie and righting his jacket.

"It's not up to you," he said, shrugging. "I fear that this is merely the path that has been set for us."

He felt the fibers of his gloves strain as his nails threatened to puncture right through and push into his palms. "No."

"My, Batman, aren't you wordy tonight," the Joker laughed, spinning on his heel. "But I wouldn't worry about it. At least we'll be able to keep one another company in the years to come. Who knows? Maybe they'll let us share a bunk at Arkham one day, I'll get the bottom and you get the-"

"_No." _And he barely got a look at the Joker's face before he descended upon him.

The Joker was right—completely right. It was their destiny to keep doing this. They were going to fight and fight and fight until they killed each other. The same was true of all of Gotham and the people rioting inside. In spite of himself, Batman knew that there was a chance that his world could never be salvaged. Not if he kept going on this way.

He hadn't been thinking when he'd done it. It had just happened, as guilty parties were prone to say. But nevertheless, he remembered seeing the Joker falling through the air before he realized he was the one who'd dropped him. Though it had been a drop that would have easily bashed a regular person's brains out, Batman had felt no inclination to save him. He'd just watched, chest tight and barely breathing, some strange emotion nagging at his heart.

Now, sitting in an ancient fire escape, he realized that he'd been hoping. He'd been hoping for the exact same reason that he'd panicked when he'd realized the Joker was no longer in the alley.

It was horrible, he knew, but he realized now that he'd wanted the Joker to disappear. He'd wanted it to be a perfect, permanent thing, ending either with fire or a grave. Or something. Something that meant they weren't going to chase one another anymore. Something that would just let him rest.

Batman took his shoulder in his hand, and with a quick decisive motion, shoved it back into its socket. The pain brought his senses back into his limbs and he gasped breathlessly in surprise. Moments later he went limp, utterly exhausted and painfully alone. He tried to chuckle, but the sound was dry and false in his throat. He thought about crying, but in the back of his mind something laughed at the very idea of it.

_Yeah right,_ he thought. _Only humans cry._

He swallowed in everything, all those parts of him he'd worked so hard to keep down but tried to force their way out anyway, and then he stood. It was a shaking, pathetic thing, like a child taking its first steps more than an adult walking for his hundredth time, but it made no difference. He slid off the fire escape, stumbled, then ran. The Joker couldn't have gone that much further, not broken the way he was. Even he wasn't that strong.

Sure enough, the vigilante ran into the clown six blocks down, at a dead end alley with on one end and Batman on the other. The man in purple took a few heavy breaths, looking back and forth along the alley walls. For a moment, it looked like he was considering just climbing over the gate anyway. But then he turned. At first he looked startled to see the Batman behind him, but instead of crying out or running, or doing something normal (because surely it was normal to be afraid to die) he tutted, wiped the blood from his lips and pushed the hair from his eyes, and tried to put together a semblance of sophistication with all his shattered bits. As though Batman really cared.

"Oh, Batman, what a coincidence," the Joker laughed. He leaned his back against a wall lazily, as though because he was just that aloof and not because his insides were a mush of bones and bleeding organs. Batman didn't even understand how he was still talking—not with his jaw knocked askew and with his chest filling with his own blood. The madman tried to laugh, but he just buckled and hacked blood into his palm. Didn't stop him from standing again and smiling at his enemy genially, as though there was nothing wrong with the way things were just then. "I was just on my way to the grocery store, if you'd like to join me. You know, just to get the essentials. Guaze, a sewing kit, surgical spirits…gatorade." He let out a shaky wheeze and gripped tighter onto his shattered arm. "The usual knickknacks."

Batman stared at him without saying anything. Frankly, he couldn't believe the Joker's incorrigibility. He'd been dropped from a building and he was walking around, talking, as though nothing was wrong. He'd been smashed like glass against the pavement, but his legs were still under him and walking. For goodness' sake, he'd practically been murdered that night. And yet he was still smiling. It would have all been pretty amusing, if it weren't so sad.

The vigilante closed his eyes, looking for the words, but there was only one. "Disappear."

Joker smiled perplexedly. He tilted his head, acting as though he hadn't heard the word over the rain. "Pardon?"

"Disappear."

The Joker laughed. It was neither crazy nor refined—it was choked up and broken, sounding more like a gurgled sob than anything else. "I'm sorry, Bats, but I'm afraid you've got my gimmick confused with someone else. I'm a clown, not a magician. But, if you'd allow, I wouldn't mind trying my hand at making your clothes vanish."

Batman took a in a slow, tense breath through his nose. He clenched his fists, let the breath out through his mouth, and looked up. "I don't want to kill you-"

"Oh, you're so sweet," the Joker purred. "I'm unworthy of your adulation."

"—But I will."

The ace of knaves snickered. "Well." He shook his head. "You could have ended that sentence with, 'the boat sinks at the end of Titanic' and you still would have sounded less predictable."

"Joker…I'm bringing this to an end." He gestured weakly to the sky, to the rain pounding at them, to the city. "All of this. I'll make all of it just stop. I just…I can't do this anymore. I'm just…too…_tired._"

The Joker snickered and shook his head. Of course he wouldn't believe it. Joker was ceaseless, tireless, perpetual. One doubted he could understand something as basic as fatigue. Batman doubted the man even slept. His eyes narrowed in one of his impossibly wide smiles, and he proclaimed with a childish fervor, "You're wrong."

Batman didn't reply. What could he possibly say to convince this man? And what could possibly persuade him to try. So he dropped his head and let the rain fall slick down his forehead and nose, watching it topple to the ground. The Joker continued to smile, waiting patiently for an answer, one of Batman's famous quips, but then he realized if he was intent on waiting, he would wait forever. His grin faltered then strained. "Y-you're wrong."

The vigilante turned and stepped away.

"You're wrong."

The Joker pushed away from the wall and tried to stumble forward, frantic now, and made a snatch for Batman's cape. "You're wrong!"

His voice echoed for a long way, and the rain fell soundless in comparison. It didn't matter how loud he yelled, though. It would always have fallen on deaf ears. The Joker was stubborn-too stubborn-and so he stayed reaching in the alley for far longer than any sane man would. He reached and clawed and fumbled desperatley about in the dark, but it made no difference. Batman was already long gone.

* * *

Ahhh, sorry this took so long, but because I'm a moron, I wrote it in sections, and then even though I was pretty much finished a few days ago I had to figure out how to pull all the sections together, and that was surprisingly difficult. But hey, it's here now! Thanks for the reviews and the support that you've given me for the first chapter! I really appreciate it! Thanks also to the people who read Indigo and decided to stop over and see if I could live up to my name—it was pretty touching (I know, I'm so dumb)

Admittedly, my personal opinion of this chapter is that it's a little bit…uhm…'heavy' word-wise, but I suppose that's an 'eyes of the beholder' type of thing. Still, hopefully the next chapter won't be so…ultraviolet….

Thanks for reading this chapter, and I hope I can continue to keep your interest for the entirety of this story!


	3. Chapter 3

It was on a miserable autumn evening, an hour past midnight on a lamp-lit bridge that, while expecting an easy night and an easy trip, the Scarecrow found the Joker.

Jonathan had met the Joker a handful of times in the past. He had often amused himself with the idea of strapping the man down and finding out just what made him tick. Of course, not being an _idiot_ like the rest of the cretins populating Gotham, he had never been foolhardy enough to try it. Observing the results of the failed attempts of others was more than enough to sate him, if for no other reason than that it was amusing to see those clods at Arkham get their just deserts. He could not very well say that he liked the Joker, but he could be quite compelling at his best, and even at his worst he presented an intriguing puzzle to those rare intellectuals the likes of Jonathan Crane.

The man had merely been heading back to his lair (people like him did not have mundane things such as 'homes'), carrying a plastic bag filled with various items he'd picked up on his walk, and wearing a coat, hat and scarf in a vain attempt to keep from freezing to death. The sky was black, studded with the occasional persistent star and a long arc of smoke stretching eastwards from a burning down apartment several blocks away. The clown was hunched over beneath a streetlight, his shadow right beneath him and looking like a pit he was about to fall into. There was blood on the ground, a poppy red mark splayed across the stone like dripping paint, but that was no surprise. Blood followed him wherever he went, a red string weaving in and out the labyrinthine city with him always waiting at the end. His shoulders were shuddering in quick, short bursts, and every few seconds he let out a small, pathetic sound. When the two first stumbled upon each other, the dark waters beneath the bridge whispering in weary tones and the wind coming by and battering them both, Scarecrow thought the man was crying.

The thought had been absurd at its very conception, and when the once-psychiatrist moved to walk across the bridge, having every intention to go past the Joker without a second glance, he saw the man was laughing. But it was such a mirthless sound his throat could just as easily been welling up with sobs.

He could not say what possessed him—even his own mind refused to give away every one of its secrets—but Scarecrow stopped in front of the Joker and looked down on him. Gently, he took the hat he was wearing from his head and pressed it to his chest, polite if for no other reason than that he knew the Joker would have treated him similarly. The light was suddenly resting on him, alighting on his shoulders and his hair and causing the edges of his glasses to flash white. Beneath the shadow cast upon his face, his lips turned upwards, smiling something superficial and sterile as it was all he knew to do.

He tipped his head toward the Joker, trying to keep silent and distant from him though they stood right before one another, and he said, "Good evening."

The Joker looked up. Jonathan was not the sort to start—it would hardly match his general disposition if he was—and so it was only with a raised eyebrow and pursed lips that he took in the Joker's features. His eyes moved across the clowns form with medical detachment, noting and cataloguing the Joker's wounds but hardly empathizing. His interest lay more in the way Joker smiled up at him with those red lips redder still, split and bruised and bloodied as they were, his white face even paler than usual and shining with sweat, and instead of eyes glittering with laughter they were filled to the brink with pain. It was almost too much to take.

"You? Feel pain?" Scarecrow wanted to laugh. "How absurd! So it seems that you know how to tell a joke after all." But the man stayed silent on the bridge, waiting instead.

The clown tried to take in a breath so he could get enough momentum to speak, but he only buckled under the weight of his own lungs and hacked blood onto Scarecrow's shoes. Jonathan glanced down once and regarded this with quiet distaste. His expression was enough to get a slight chuckle from the Joker.

"Why, good evening, Dr. Crane!" The Joker's voice was mangled and pathetic. It was hardly comparable to the madman's usual joyous gusto. "Fancy…fancy meeting you here." He started coughing, but it seemed he momentarily forgot that one of his arms was utterly out of commission and tried to lift it. Seeing the flash of anger that crossed his face as his limb not only denied him, but flat out revolted against him-the way the pain made him hunch further and stumble backwards to the edge of the circle of light—was almost enough to make Scarecrow ask what was wrong. Joker reached out with his working arm and put it against the lamppost, forcing himself to steady though just from looking at him one could ascertain that his every organ and system were collapsing inside him. "It has been…quite some time since you and I crossed paths, hasn't it…my favorite little know-it-all pigeon-rack?" He pushed himself away from the lamppost then and tried to stand as Jonathan did, actively opposing his lofty gaze. It was only then that Jonathan moved, and all he did was shake his head. To say it out loud would be redundant, but inside the doctor thought disdainfully, _What a fool_.

"This is certainly a strange coincidence," Scarecrow agreed. "It seems even when you're not looking for anyone, you still find them. Perhaps that is the nature of this city." He took his hat from his chest and gently put it back on his head. "No matter. If it's all the same to you, the night is still young, and I have things to which I must attend."

"Of course, of course," said the Joker, wheezing between words. Even though Scarecrow nodded once and continued on his way, "I didn't mean…to keep you." Joker swung his head back somehow and called, "Say hello to the missus for me!"

Though there was no such person, and the Joker knew that as well as any—as far as Scarecrow was concerned, romance and all that it entailed were much to visceral for a man of science to do anything more than observe in controlled conditions. However, it was enough to get him to stop, and then with an irritated sigh, he walked back to the madman beside the lamppost.

"Where's Harley, Joker?" he asked. Mist welled up from his lips as he spoke, and it wouldn't have surprised him if it began to snow. "I thought she usually took care of you whenever Batman left you in a state."

The Joker cocked his head one way in consideration, eyebrows furrowed deeply in thought. After a few introspective seconds, he answered, "Well, I think I saw her limbs…stuffed under a bed at one point. But as for the rest of her…." He glanced up and got an eyeful of the other man's face, eyes narrowed and lips twisted in distaste, and grinned. "Lighten up, Scarecrow, I'm kidding!"

"Yes, well…" Jonathan muttered. "With you, one can never tell. You shouldn't be standing, you know. You're only aggravating your injuries."

"Worse things have happened."

The doctor didn't know why he didn't simply take Joker's obstinacy at face value and bid him a warm farewell, but there was something deeply irksome about the way the man was merely shrugging off his every suggestion. A part of him, he knew, was still a doctor. He wasn't used to people disregarding his expert opinion. It simply wasn't normal. "Harley would be devastated if something happened to you. You're aware that if such a thing came to pass, it would be the rest of us who would have to suffer the consequences of your carelessness."

"Well…good riddance to all of you," the man chuckled. "I never liked you anyway." It was then that he sat down and laid himself silently out on the street as though preparing himself for a deep sleep.

Scarecrow stared down at the madman, and suddenly an insane urge gripped his senses and refused to let him go. Inwardly he thrashed and tore against it, but as it turned out he was just as ridiculously incorrigible as the Joker was. He couldn't say that he cared whether or not the Joker lived or died, but he tried to rationalize his actions by reminding himself that losing such a mind before it had been thoroughly understood would be a great loss to the field of psychology, and he was nothing if not a man of science. Regardless of the clear logic guiding his actions, he couldn't help but loathe himself for them. He got on his knees beside the other villain and tried his best to keep his face empty even while he was being leveled with the Joker's bemused gaze. Reminding himself twice more that this was for science, he drew in a breath between his teeth, squeezed his eyes shut, and ground roughly out, "Let me see."

The Joker let out a nasty bark of laughter in reply.

"What's this?" the clown grinned. "Are you not the man…that punched the Riddler after being made to explain…that you were not _that _type of doctor…one too many times?"

Scarecrow shot a glare up at the Joker, daring him to test the fragility of his good will, and in reply the madman chuckled gently and waved his hand in apology.

"Unbotton your shirt, please."

"I can't say I'm…entirely comfortable with that," said the Joker. Scarecrow had no idea what it was that was keeping him from fear-toxining the fool then and there. "You see, I've been working out…and I don't want you to get jealous of my…heh…tremendous physique. I'd hate to ruin our…relationship like that."

"Indeed. Well, I wouldn't get too comfortable." Knowing he wouldn't get much help in this regard, and citing the Hippocratic Oath as his reason (as much as it could still possibly apply to him), he started to unbutton the Joker's shirt. He utterly ignored the chorus of giggles that followed. "As you say, my expertise never really lay with remedying the various maladies that a human body can undergo, fragile things that they are. So I can't be held responsible for whatever happens to—" Scarecrow stopped dead and stared.

He'd seen some truly unfortunate injuries in his life—and caused more than a few—but whatever had become of the Joker that night was right near the top of the list. His entire abdomen was either black or a hideous purple, thick with the blood filling up his insides. There were a number of external injury, but the blood they oozed was thick and dark. Even the way the man's chest rose and fell in haggard breaths was grotesque, and at the same time his breaths made his chest rise upward, it expanded sideways as well. What made these somehow worse was that Batman had been the one to inflict them, the man sworn never to take a life. Even factoring in the Joker's absurd durability, even Batman couldn't have honestly expected the madman to survive this sort of treatment? A tremor came through Jonathan's fingers. Or perhaps that was very well the case—maybe Batman_ hadn't_ been expecting the clown to survive.

The Joker watched Scarecrow taking in the extent of the damage inflicted upon his torso, and even though most people would have taken it for a sober moment, it was too much to ask that he didn't begin to laugh again. "Oh, I knew it. I should have kept my shirt on," he tutted. "Things will never…be the same between us now, will they?" He smiled. "Not with this abdominal envy…floating around. I suppose my only reprieve is that…you didn't ask me to take off my trousers—that would have really…muddied the waters…if you get my salacious drift."

Jonathan pursed his lips and buttoned the clown's shirt back up again. There was nothing he could do for him. "You need to go to a hospital."

Joker smirked and shook his head. "You know I can't do that."

Scarecrow did know he couldn't do that. However, it made no difference. He stood up and wiped some blood that had gotten on his hands off on his coat. "If you don't, then you will die."

"So?"

"'_So?'"_ repeated Scarecrow with vexation. "Do you have any concept of what death is, Joker? Perhaps not, so allow me to characterize the condition in laymen's terms. All your biological functions will terminate and your 'being' and all that it concerns will disappear into a nameless abyss and then, once you are cold, grinning corpse, your body will begin to be broken down by fungi and other saprotrophs and you will becoming nothing more than the dirt men like me step on, and will be worth just as much. Joker," he hissed. "You will _cease _to _exist_."

Even when such a straight forward, to-the-point explanation of why what he was doing was moronic, all the Joker had to offer Jonathan was scorn.

"Gosh, Encyclopedia Panphobia, that's your…definition in laymen's terms?" He snorted. His entire body was shaking by now, and sweat was practically pouring out of him. "Well, while I… appreciate the trivia…would it be too much that you leave me to…to my 'saprotrophs' or what have you." He dropped his head gently upon his shoulder and sighed. "Even if I got up…what would be the use?"

Scarecrow wrinkled his nose, hardly able to contain his perturbation. Never in his life had he thought he would witness the day the Joker would simply give up. Out of all the villains in all the world, every one of them seemed infinitely more likely to eventually throw in the towel, but never the Joker. He was too stubborn and too stupid for such a thing, and yet his words were spoken with just enough sobriety that Scarecrow believed he was being serious. Confused doubly so because he was never confused, Scarecrow spat out, "Your behavior is highly irregular."

"Have I ever told you…how I love the way you talk? You're like a Martian."

"What did you mean by that nonsense? Are you seriously considering giving up? Just like that? You of all people? Honestly? _Honestly?_" He shook his head in disbleif. "What is wrong with you, Joker?"

"For someone with a Ph.D.…you sure ask stupid questions. Heh. 'What's wrong with you.' Heh, 'what's wrong with you,' indeed." And the Joker continued to chuckle breathlessly, more and more, until suddenly he threw his head back and roared with laughter that couldn't possibly have come from that broken body. Scarecrow stared at him speechlessly, quickly surrounded by the raucous laughter, his mind forced utterly blank in its face, but the Joker stopped on his own long before anyone had to make him. Still laughing between words, he dropped his head back and back and, beneath a faint gurgle in his throat, he whispered, "That moron..."

"Excuse me—"

"Idiot!" Scarecrow let out a cry when Joker grabbed him by the ankle and yanked him off his feet. He collapsed flat on his back, his bag smashing loudly beside him. "Charlatan! Nincompoop! Do you think you can just make me stop!" The madman fisted his hand in Jonathan's shirt and pulled him up so that they were face to face. "Do you think you can control me? Ha!" Blood started well up on his lips and drip onto Scarecrow's shirt. The Joker didn't even look like he noticed. "Break my other arm if you like! Break my legs! Break my back for all I care! If you think you can just end this-" The Joker spat and blood splattered on Jonathan's cheeks and glasses. "If you think you can just leave me-then you're the one who's crazy! There's something wrong with _you_!"

"Joker, have you lost your mind?" Scarecrow hissed, and the clown only replied, "Yes! It's exactly that. _Exactly _that!" Tremors rippled up and down the madman's form and his grip began to weaken. "I've lost it. It's gone." His eyes widened, eyelids fluttered and then fell. "All gone." He rocked sideways and shifted his weight to steady himself. "At this rate I won't have…anything…anymore." Sleepily he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He brought his hand to his face and looked down on the long, black smear his blood had left behind as though he wasn't even aware that it was his. "Ugh…" he muttered irritably. "I…feel…sick…"

Jonathan let out a hiss when the Joker collapsed upon him, and stared down on him from behind his shining, blood-splattered glasses. He looked one way across the bridge, and then the other, looking to see if he was alone. Irritated at both the Joker and himself, he slid out from under the man and got onto his feet. He took his hat off the floor while he was at it, as the Joker had knocked it off his head in his frenzy, but when he found it too had specks of red all over it he frowned and threw it over the bridge, into the river. As soon as he had a decent change of clothes, then the rest of his outfit would follow. But that was a worry for another time. He looked down at the man lying at his feet, somehow still breathing, then he looked up at the sky.

He really loathed long nights like these.

* * *

_In which two sesquipedalian murderers meet on a bridge_

Ahhhh, thanks again for reviews, favorites, alerts, and just the general reader who stopped by. Every bit makes my day, you know?

I really like writing scenes where the Joker's wounded—probably because I could have literally anything happen to him, from getting parts severed to getting shot in the head, and it would actually seem less believable if it killed him. There aren't many human characters you can do that with. He's just so damn stubborn, isn't he?

In regards to Scarecrow, I really hope his presence doesn't feel shoehorned or anything—I mean, maybe it does, but I don't know, and am totally unable to articulate myself properly right now. Originally this chapter was a lot more comedic, but then I thought it would tamper with the atmosphere of the previous two and I didn't much like that idea, and so it was. Regardless, I think a couple of the other rogues will probably show up in this fic as well, but I think next chapter is Batman's—probably. I guess we'll see. Regardless, I think these three chapters sort of make a collective prologue type thing, though I didn't really like how this one ended, but hopefully the next chap will make up for it.

Anyway, thank you for reading chapter three! I really appreciate, as always, and I hope you stick around!


	4. Chapter 4

When Batman arrived back at the mansion, it was well past midnight and was just barely been conscious. He stepped out into the Batcave slowly, stripped off his cowl and his cape as he moved across the dark expanse of stone. Though he was sure he was for all purposes still living, his heartbeat and his movements were mechanical, operating not from necessity but design. It made sense, actually. At this point, everything the vigilante did was because he'd been programmed to. Everything he said and did, even things like eating and sleeping and _breathing_, were calculated. And they were cold. He lived like a machine did, with every thought and action limited to a pool of choices over which he'd had no say, and yet he had none of the benefits of being built from twisting wires and steel. If the vigilante could turn a dial or flip a switch, if he could be reset or turned off or just somehow, suddenly, change, then he would gladly have reached for the button himself-he looked up at the vast, cavernous ceiling, filled up with darkness and damp and the echoes of his footsteps as he drifted through corridors and rose up stairs-but it was naïve to ask for more than what one was given. Still, after years of picking up the bill for everyone else, he wondered if it was too much to ask that he at least be given what was actually his.

When he entered the mansion from the batcave and started to move towards his bedroom, he lingered for a moment on the marble staircase. Above was the crystal chandelier that was eternally speared by moonlight and the windows on every side fell in and out of darkness with the passing clouds, as though they had invisible shutters that billowed in a quiet wind. Night slanted this way and that across the marble, battling against the moon and stars for domain over the floor, but it already had the corners and the ceiling and was slowly encroaching on the entirety of the room.

The mansion had never been a warm place. Even as a child, when his parents were still alive and his nights were certain and secure, its vastness, with all its eternally empty spaces and always unwalked halls, had made it lonely. It wasn't a biting loneliness, not the type that made you curl up in the corner and cry. It was the sort that numbed you over time; that tugged at you gently and uttered whispered words before pulling you down and swallowing you whole.

"Master Bruce."

He started out of his reverie and saw there that Alfred was standing at the base of the stairs. He was still in his work clothes and his face look as if it had put on a few years over night. Bruce didn't have to ask to know what he'd been doing. Alfred had been up worrying in the sitting room as per usual, staring worriedly at walls and watches while awaiting Bruce's return, and if he kept it up he was likely going to kill himself. Still, there was something about his tight, irritated expression that made Bruce wanted to smile, though he never did. When Alfred got an eyeful of him, his face soured with worry, which was odd because the vigilante wasn't anymore beat up than usual—quite the opposite, he'd actually come out pretty well for once. Was it something in his face, then? Something in his eyes?

"Where in the world have you been?" said the butler in his concerned-patriarch voice. "Are you aware that the sun's about to rise? Do you know what the means?" He put his hands on his waist. "It means you've been out longer than the bloody moon, sir."

"You could have just called me."

"I did, but I couldn't get through. I thought we talked about this," Alfred sighed. "If you want to muck about in the city until dawn, then at least keep your communications open so that when you don't answer I at least know where to find your dead body so I can give you're a proper burial."

"Well, in any case I'm back," said Batman, but there was nothing in his voice that seemed to mean it. "And I'm alright." His words quivered on the lie. "So I'm going to bed."

"Then allow me to escort you." Alfred began to ascend the stairs, and as he came up Bruce moved back—if they came close enough, he was worried there were things he would be unable to hide. The butler noticed and paused on the steps. Whatever it was he'd noticed in Bruce from the foyer, maybe he'd already seen too much of it. No, Batman could see it already—on the painful, whispered words that hissed inside his chest, Alfred didn't need to eavesdrop. He didn't want to know.

And that was fine—no. It was _good_. Because in spite of himself, Bruce didn't want Alfred to know either. Though it was something only mentioned with passing, wry smiles and wan words, Alfred was one of those strange sort of optimists who always expected something, anything at all, to come from what was there. It wasn't a hope for good or bad, it was just _hope_, lying all alone quiet and waiting for something to change the world. For better or for worse, day in and day out, Batman knew that that hope had been resting with him. Amongst his many burdens it had been a burden on its own, but one that was weighty and strong. Like shield, or a sword. So even from where he stood looking down at Alfred, who was still standing in the light even though they were both on the same staircase, he could feel the burden growing slowly lighter before it shuddered and held firm.

"Yes," the butler murmured and began again to rise. "I'll escort you."

Batman didn't try to protest though he wished that tonight the man could just leave him alone. Even if he'd fought Alfred hand to hand, brought out his entire inventory of gadgets and stocked up skills, he doubted he'd be able to put a scratch on his convictions.

They went to Bruce's room without exchanging words, but it was an unfamiliar silence. A coward's quiet. Batman pushed open his door and looked in. There was no one inside—he didn't know why that was the first thing that crossed his mind, but it had seemed immediately most pertinent at the time. It was such a childish thing to think, though. After all, it wasn't like there would ever be anyone inside. That room had been empty since the day it was built.

He didn't check to see if Alfred was behind him when he went in, carefully treading on the outline of the long shadows traversing the floor. He pulled down the top part of his suit, and he'd had every intention to fall into bed that way until the butler tutted and pulled him back. Somehow, he must have noticed Batman's shoulder, though it was impossible to say how. It looked fine from the outside.

"Honestly, I don't know what you do to yourself," the man muttered as he walked over to Bruce's chest of drawers. He pulled open the third drawer and sure enough when his hands emerged from it inside them was a roll of bandages. In reality, there were more first-aid items in that chest than there were clothes. Alfred motioned for Bruce to sit down on the bed, and when he'd done so the elder man leaned over him and began binding the vigilante's shoulder—nice and tight so it kept him all together. "These injuries get so ridiculous, you'd think you did it on purpose sometimes."

"I'm already one kind of masochist," said Bruce, trying to keep his voice light. "I'm just trying to cover all my bases."

Alfred didn't laugh. He finished binding up Batman's shoulder, and then with a thin-lipped frown he said, "Is something troubling you, sir? You don't seem quite…" He looked at Bruce once, then dropped his gaze. "…yourself…"

The vigilante stood without answering and went to the glass doors that lead out onto his balcony. Though the doors weren't heavy, when he pulled them open his motions were slow and burdened, and he felt exhausted by the time the night sky had opened up to him. The sudden prickle of cold against his bare skin, the burn of his shoulder healing, the numbness of his fingertips as they went frigid—it all brought him a sudden, surging sense of relief that made his head light and his thoughts absurdly clear.

"What do you think of this city, Alfred?" he said as he went to the balustrade.

The butler looked at Bruce quizzically, his brows furrowed in quiet worry. "Am I to assume that that's a rhetorical question?"

The vigilante let out a quiet, mirthless sound, his lips pulling into something that could never really be a smile. It seemed out of all the things the Joker had ever tried to teach him, the one thing that had refused to stick was the way to make that grin.

Bruce gripped the balcony railing and started to pull himself onto it, then turned when he heard the butler take a quick step towards him. The man had his arm half extended and his eyes open wide, readying to catch Bruce if he fell or pull him back if he tried to jump. When their eyes met, Bruce gave him the kindest expression he could manage—which wasn't very kind at all—and Alfred bowed his head and let the Batman go. Despite the binding over his shoulder the joint ached when he moved, throbbing with a reassuring pain. He balanced easily on the thin strip of metal, and though he'd only raised himself a few feet above the floor, it felt as though he'd risen up miles. He looked up at the sky that was slowly turning blue at the edges, then down, into darkness that had yet to realize it was morning. In the distance, Gotham was just a haze of dark smog and black buildings, the occasional yellow light shining through.

"The city that doesn't want to be saved," he murmured. He put his arms ahead of him then moved them back and stretched them above his head as though he was getting ready to fly. "I wonder about it too."

"Wonder about what, sir?"

Without hesitating he answered, "How much it's worth saving."

Batman glanced Alfred's expression in the corner of his eye, and he should have wished he hadn't said it. But when you didn't know that something was wrong, you didn't really expect other people to think it either.

"What are you saying, sir?" The butler rasped, his hand extending itself again. "Of course it's worth saving. Your parents, the police force, your company and everyone it helps, they all depend on this city. They need it to be saved. They-,"

"I was kidding, Alfred." Bruce forced an uncanny smile onto his lips before he gave up on it and turned away. "Kidding." After a strange murmur, he said, "I just wanted to make sure you still believed I could."

He heard Alfred take in a thick breath through his nose, but his voice wavered and his strength, wherever he got it from, was unsure. "Of course, Master Bruce."

There was a groan from the city, a deep, sweeping sound like a great animal heaving out a breath. The vigilante watched a plume of smoke that was making its way from a faraway gasket and trailing across the sky like a storm cloud. He put his hand against his face wearily and tried to wipe the sleep from his eyes. It refused to go. "I'm tired," he said. "I think I'm going to go to bed."

Neither man moved from where he was standing, as though Bruce had uttered some sort of dare and the pair of them were engaged in a game of chicken. After a little while, he stopped caring if he lost and attempted another one of those miserable smiles. "Would you care to join me?"

Alfred smiled instinctively, and the worry in his eyes became just a little bit weaker. "Of course not, sir." He bowed his head once and retreated to the door, and before he left murmured, "Do sleep well."

To which Batman replied thankfully, "I will."

Though Bruce kept intending to go to bed, to sleep away the worldweariness that kept him so awake, he never did. He stayed standing on the railing until the blue hour, and still a little bit longer after that. He felt the brief but real moment where the earth was coldest before sunrise, and he felt it seep into his bones and never leave. Light broke on the city and died in its streets, never corrupting its pure and perfect blackness. Slowly, Bruce lifted his hands and framed it with his fingers—there it was. His entire world, and he could fit it within the gap between his thumb and forefinger. He closed his eyes, and when he felt himself beginning to tip backwards off the railing, he closed his fist on the city and pulled himself back up.

* * *

All my chapters are really short and useless for this fic, huh? …And you waited so long too…

But seriously, sorry for the time this took—you know how in school there are those great lull periods where you're practically doing nothing, and then suddenly you have half a dozen projects due and your parents are breathing down your neck to study? I have recently passed out of one of those periods, and I must say I am deeply relieved to be free from that briarpatch.

This was one of those chapters though-like when you want to write something but it just refuses to flow the way you want and there's something immediately following it that you'd much rather write but you have to get over the present hurtle first? That convoluted sentence there didn't make this chapter finish any faster, I'll tell you that. Next chap should be easier-we're heading up to Botswana for a school trip in two weeks, so I'll try to get it up before then, since I doubt I'll be able to use that time productively.

Anyway, thanks everyone! And to Wbss21 in particular: (heavy tears of speechless gratitude) I hope you all stick around!


	5. Chapter 5

The Joker woke up to a thick, morphine smell, the numbing pain of an IV needle in his arm, and the short but droning beeps of an ECG. It took him a while before he realized that's what they were, of course—the drugs did nothing for his reaction time—but as soon as he did, he was abruptly and violently awake.

There was something about hospitals—something about people who thought they could_ fix_ things, people who thought they could fix _him_, as though he was broken, as though he was the one who needed help—just something intrinsic to their very nature that grated on his every nerve. He tolerated the psychiatrists at Arkham because their hilarious naïveté made them all the more amusing to twist about like silly putty, but real doctors were different. You never spoke to them, they hardly even looked at you; they just shoved things inside you and went on their merry way. They didn't get to know you, so you never really got the chance to mess them up. You could scare them, sure, but where was the fun in that? It was the crack of a breaking psyche, the rushing _whoosh_ of deflating hopes that made people such veritable bags of fun.

If you couldn't even get that much out of them, well, then they were just better off dead.

He tried to yank his one arm up so he could pull the electrodes off his chest and yank the needle from his arm, but it just got snapped back into place by some sort of restraint and sent pain shooting down his spin to remind him it was broken. A little prone to tunnel vision, it was only then that the Joker realized the room he was in was almost completely dark, save for a small, dim light hanging over an empty piece of floor.

He blinked at the sharp, abrupt snap of a latex glove closing rapidly around a wrist, and something shifted in the dark.

"Ah, so you're finally awake.

There was a creak, the faint tap-tap of slow footsteps, and then, in all his scrub-clad glory stepped into the light Jonathan Crane. The man's latex-covered hands were held up like a surgeon's, as though he was getting ready to cut someone open, and his glasses glinted beneath the light until there were no eyes to see beneath them.

"Good morning, Joker," he breathed from behind a pale surgical mask, "and welcome. This is my lair." Joker had never taken the Scarecrow as the smiling type, but there was something in his voice, something almost jovial that made him reconsider this assessment. The doctor continued to approach with a subdued slowness, and only stopped at the foot of Joker's bed, standing before a surgical tray with all the choppy little metal bits laid all neatly out in a row. The man made an audible smirking sound as he dropped his hands and placed them gently on a scalpel on the tray. "And you are my newest test subject."

The Joker said nothing. There was really nothing he could say, and as such, they stayed staring at each other in the lone, flickering light for many minutes, and what they didn't say was filled up by the neon buzz above.

When, after a few seconds of mind-numbing silence, the Joker leaned sideways so he could take the IV between his teeth and hurl it at the other man, Jonathan lifted his eyes to the ceiling and sighed exasperatedly. Stepping back, he reached out with his elbow and flipped a switch on the wall, and with a click the other lights flickered on overhead. This whole business stopped making even a bit of sense at that point. When the Joker relayed as much in a long, quizzical look, Crane grumbled.

"I was_ trying_ to make a joke."

The Joker threw his head back, but the thick, wheezing sounds that could have been called laughter rang as hollow and airy as they sounded. It hurt like getting a million knives jammed right into his large intestine, but it was nothing he hadn't felt before—at least if there was nothing else in the stupid world that was dependable, pain was, and aggressively so. In spite of that, he forced every ounce of laughter out of him until he could stare long enough at Jonathan to notice he was frowning.

"Oh!" he barked, hitting his hand against the metal bar of the bed and letting the absurdity of everything sweep him up and carry him away._ "That_ time you were serious!" He smiled, and said very deliberately, "I'm sorry, it's just so difficult to tell with you."

The Scarecrow shook his head.

"Well," he grumbled, quickly undoing the belts that held the Joker's arms—the clown saw then that his cast was a bright, garish purple; so Crane actually had some taste in him after all. "It's nice to see that you're not brain damaged—at least, no more so than usual." As soon as he was free, Joker immediately moved to yank the drip from his arm, but Scarecrow slapped his hand away. Broken arm or not, he would have crushed Crane's glasses right back into his emaciated little face if it weren't for the fact that the man did it with such automatic apathy that it was hard to get angry over it.

"Please don't fiddle with that, it's the only thing keeping you alive right now," said the former psychiatrist, pulling at the drip bag to see that everything was still in working order. He shook his head and looked down at the Joker irritably. "You know, to say I'm amazed that you haven't died of starvation is grossly understating it—what's keeping your body from_ eating_ itself? To say nothing of your thoracic cage, you're lucky you didn't perish from something as mundane as a vitamin deficiency."

The ace of knaves kept his mind quickly skittering over the surface of his thoughts, making it so that they didn't delve into the reason _why_ he never had time to eat, _why_ he never had time to sleep, _why _he'd been shattered into itty-bitty-squishy pieces and left to haul himself together, at the mercy of some other silly villain no less. He chuckled, but a sharp pain in his chest cut him off and he drew in a shallow breath between his teeth—it hurt to laugh. "What can I say?" he said. "How else would I keep this fabulous figure?"

"Indeed. In any case, if I were you I would start eating something other than candy for once and maybe start drinking my milk. If you keep it up, it'll be another _year_ before your bones are fully healed."

The Joker looked down at his cast arm reflexively. As soon as he did, it occurred to him that someone had had him completely restrained—completely at his mercy-and without him even asking, had let him go. Combined with Scarecrow's 'joke' from before, he had the awful feeling that Jonny was trying to get into his goodbooks. He smirked; how cute. As though he even had such things. He leaned back and lifted his cast arm, testing to see how much he could still use it like this. "Well, it sounds like I'm doing quite splendidly."

"Actually, to put it bluntly, your insides are pulp." Scarecrow gestured to the blood-stained bandages that were tight around the Joker's bare chest. "You've been practically comatose for days, and you were this close to death regardless when I had the good will to haul you over here. On my back. In the godforsaken snow." The man scowled when the Joker continued testing out his arm, blissfully ignorant of whatever silliness the Scarecrow was espousing. As though it would help, Jonathan added, "As it stands, you should be relieved you're not defecating into a plastic tube."

"Oh, hush up, Jonny," the clown laughed, but it seemed he'd wasted all his energy already, and it hardly came out as a breath. He dropped his arm. "You're polluting my delicate psyche with your dirty words."

"You would have me believe that there's something delicate about _your_ psyche?"

"Look at how handsome I am! Of course I'm delicate—comes with the territory."

There was a thin, whimpering sound to the Joker's side, which was well timed in that it stopped Jonathan for giving his unwanted opinion on the clown's stunning good looks. He turned his head, surprised he hadn't noticed that the big, white room of steel and linoleum was even bigger than he'd thought. In a bed, wired up to IVs and a turned-off ECG, was another man. He was admittedly not half as handsome, what with the blood-stained bandages over his eyes and his all but smashed-in nose. He was withered, his skin looking like a piece of rubber stretched over a school skeleton practically to its tearing point—Joker knew this because the man was entirely naked, not even having a blanket to cover him. The Joker could count his every goosebump and shiver as he lay in the quiet, sterile cold, whimpering from behind a plastic breathing mask that was no doubt feeding him a steady dose of oxygen and fear toxin.

"And who's this?" asked Joker, before turning to Jonathan with a grin. "Your love-muffin, I take it? Taking turns batting for both teams, eh? Welcome to the club."

"His name is Mr. Abbey," Scarecrow said, completely ignoring the Joker. "He was the doctor I absconded with to manage your injuries, and he did a surprisingly good job at it too, considering how incompetent doctors tend to be in this city. But alas…" The professor sighed as he ran his knuckles over the side of Mr. Frederick's face, bringing on a fit of thick, choked sobs. "…he has not quite managed to outlive his usefulness."

The Joker gestured to the bandages on his face. "What's wrong with his eyes?"

"They're sewn shut," Jonathan answered matter-of-factly. "To, ah…" He lifted his fist to his mouth and cleared his throat, maybe noticing that he sounded a bit too giddy about his little experiment. "…enhance the experience."

"You're into some pretty dizzy stuff, Spooks, I'll give you that. Makes me a little nervous that I was restrained and shirtless in here for a week. You didn't do anything…" he cupped his hands around his mouth and whispered, "…untoward, did you?"

"Yes, Joker, because I_ live_ to molest the half-nude bodies of nearly-dead men."

The clown's eyes flicked to Mr. Abbey, and the psychiatrist's gaze followed. The Joker swore the man was blushing when he angrily tore the blanket from the madman's legs and tossed it over the near-dead doctor, as though that somehow absolved him of any perceived sin. The smirk the Joker gave him wasn't half as grand as it needed to be.

"I wonder what else you do with your 'experiments.'"

"You know what_ I _wonder?" said Jonathan loudly, turning to meet the Joker's eyes with angry defiance. "What _happened _to you?"

The Joker had the feeling he'd been smiling before that point. Not anymore. The grin was wiped off his lips as though he'd wrenched it off himself, taking skin and teeth off with it. The instant the words left his lips, Jonathan seemed poignantly aware that he had chosen the worst possible subject change.

"Nevermind it," he said quickly. "It doesn't matter."

"Right," said the Joker, forcing up the smile again. "Doesn't matter."

The madman continued to stare at the former psychiatrist, and when it became too much for him the Scarecrow seemed determined to use every single weapon in his armada to make the Joker stop. He reached into the small, breast pocket of his scrub shirt and, curious, the clown leaned forward to see what it could be inside. When he saw that it was a pager of all things, there were truly no words with which the Joker could express his delight.

"Is that a _beeper?_ And here I was, thinking I was old-fashioned, but sir you have outdone me."

"Cellphones interfere with the machines," Scarecrow grumbled, apparently taking offense to the idea that he was not as forward thinking and cutting edge as he was held to be.

"Who could you possibly use it with anyway?" the clown scoffed as the other man tapped away on it. "Or are you using it to channel the long lost soul of your dead, 80s family member?"

Jonathan set the beeper down on the bedside table pushed against the wall between the clown and the cadaver-man. "I leant her one."

The Joker narrowed his eyes and the edges of his lips fell. That was an ominous set of words if he'd ever heard them. "Her?"

Something slammed into the metal door across the room, rattling the glass pane of its little window like one of those stupid birds that snapped their necks hurling themselves at office buildings. The Joker stared at the door in nonplussed silence for about a nanosecond as the person on the other side tried to figure out the doorknob, and then he realized there was only one 'her' it could possibly have been.

"Ugh!" he cried, looking around for something to throw. "Her!" he made a quick grab for the IV, but the Scarecrow slapped his hand away again with an automatic 'I told you not to touch that.' The Joker looked up in irritation, hardly acquiescing to the other man's nonchalant attitude. "Why did you invite her here?"

"I didn't," Crane replied smoothly, as though he was somehow not the villain in all this. "She merely found you, though one wonders how she possibly have managed, since I did quite a good job of covering my tracks this time. Actually," he chuckled mirthlessly, as though it was not a compliment he was relaying, "when she showed up out of the blue as she did, it reminded me quite a bit of you."

"You can be really mean sometimes." The Joker frowned at the woman as she burst in through the door and ran over to him haphazardly, a blubbering mess of tears and running make-up.

"P-puddin'!" she wailed, one hand reaching blindly out, the other up to her face to wipe away her tears. It didn't help—not even a little. "I-I was s-so scared…! I thought…I thought…!" And then she was just a massive, hideous wreck consisting entirely of shrieking babies and the saddest dolphin in the world.

He usually didn't give the woman a lot of credit for most things, but he had to hand it to her—she really had a knack for getting on his nerves. And that, he had always believed, spoke volumes about her character. After all, he was a supremely _patient_ and _rational_ man, but when it came to Harley, the very act of her existing made Joker want to sock her in the face. He was so used to it that, when she ran up to his bedside and took his hand in both of hers, he consciously waited for the surge of anger that usually wracked him at her presumptuous touchy-feely-ness so that he could feel justified when he left her bleeding out her face on the linoleoum floor. It was practically a conditioned response by now, Pavlov be blessed, and even though Scarecrow was standing right over there watching them he felt no inhibitions about expressing his displeasure. Quite the opposite in fact, he was actually far more open to having others watch than doing it alone, because if someone could reaffirm his loathing for the girl, then she might finally get it through her stupid, blonde little skull that he _did not want her_.

Sure, she had her uses, and she was really great to mess around with when he was bored, but like a loud, yappy dog, she was only fun until one realized how annoying she could be. If he could jam her in the closet and then bring her out again when he was feeling jaded, that would be ideal. But alas, people had this annoying thing going for them called 'breathing'-not that Harley didn't use up her fair share of oxygen-and while he_ could_ just play around with her cold and rigid corpse, it just wouldn't be the same. So yes, blowing off some steam so he could put up with her another day seemed more than acceptable. But that day, what usually took a few seconds to rile him up took ages. He watched her crying over him, heard her bawling in her irritating, high pitched voice, felt her laying kisses and her tears on his knuckles and his palm, but he didn't do anything. It was like it wasn't even him in his body. The clown just observed her distantly, as though they were separated by worlds and not just skin.

He had never really thought too much about it—one did not contemplate the nature of a cockroach before stepping on it—but she really was damaged. A broken, stupid girl, so far removed from anything resembling intellect that she almost didn't deserve the miserable little life that she'd been saddled with. But the thing that made her keep on traipsing after him was the same thing that kept him pushing her away. The thing that really kept the pair of them locked in this absurd relationship if not their fashion sense and affinity towards red-lipstick, was their persistence. They were dogged and stubborn and more than a little incorrigible, and much like himself, she could handle a kneecap to the gut like a champ. She'd been tossed out, stepped on, kicked, punched, 'killed', and yet she still hung around like all that business was just kid's stuff anyway.

When Harley looked up, confused by his apparent apathy, her blue eyes, rimmed red from tears, met his. She really was like a dog, he thought. That or some other dumb animal that didn't know when to quit. Too dense to know any better, and too smitten to try and learn, all she could do was trot along at his heels and lick her wounds whenever his foot swung back and knocked her in the teeth. His eyes trailed up and down her, tracing a path from the top of her head to the ends of her fingers, and then out of the blue an awful thought occurred to him: what if Batman saw_ him _like he saw Harley? What if he looked at him and genuinely saw nothing but an irritation? What if…what if Batman really wasn't concerned if the Joker lived or died? What if their dance—the very essence of the Joker, the one thing that he could genuinely say he lived for—really wasn't that important to Batman at all?

He didn't know what made him think that, but once the idea was there it hunkered down in his head and refused to go even though he tried to bombard it with his logic. It was blasphemous, absurd—their natures weren't even comparable. Harley was an inconsequential speck in comparison to what Bats and the Joker had going. An annoying speck, to be assured, but what were specks possibly good for if not to serve as menial distractions to the things that really mattered.

Yet the question still stood.

He should have killed her then—how dare she make him question anything, let alone the things in which she had absolutely no involvement. Things she couldn't even comprehend. He should have taken her head and smashed it into the nightstand, grabbed her porcelain neck and wrung it red.

Finally, he lifted his hand—pulled it out from hers and held it in the air.

Harley stared at it, her face muddled from a whole bunch of mashed together emotions, and because she didn't say anything that immediately incurred his wrath, he paused and looked at her for the first time in a long time.

Oh, Harley.

Harley, Harley, Harley.

Precious, foolish Harley.

Sweet, gullible Harley.

Poor Harley.

What was he ever going to do with her?

When his hand shifted she flinched, not that he could blame her; not that he hadn't purposely and methodically taught her to be just afraid of him enough that she deferred to him, but not afraid enough that she didn't keep coming back for more. He dropped his hand lazily and then-when it found them-curled tightly it around Harley's fingers.

_What am I going to do?_

The woman held her breath when his grip tightened. He could have yanked her forward or thrown her across the floor or held her still long enough that he could think of something really interesting to do, but he didn't do any of that. He lifted her hand to his face, kissed the ridge of her palm, then let her go.

Without looking to see her face, he rolled over onto his side. He softly touched the IV burrowed into his skin, reminding himself briefly that it was there before closing his eyes and letting the sedatives settle in his veins.

This just wasn't very funny anymore.

* * *

Ahhh…! I kept my promise…! Amazing…! Even still, I wonder about the quality of this one, but one can never say, I suppose. This was originally going to be longer, but after some mental debating I decided the second bit would work just as well in the next chapter, so yeah. Anyway thanks again for the support, and seriously, every comment and hit and all that stuff really means a ton to me. To the next one!


	6. Chapter 6

Jonathan Crane stood on the roof of whatever building it was he'd gutted and turned into his place of residence, staring out on the silent darkness of the city with little in the ways of solid thoughts. It was cold and miserable out, a thin drizzle turning the yellow streetlights just beyond into an ugly florescent haze that almost made him wish this godblessed city wasn't the only place he really truly knew. Scarecrow attempted to lift his hands so he could clean the drizzle off his glasses, but all he had in the ways of outerwear were a doctor's coat and a pair of latex gloves, and the idea of moving his limbs at all at that moment was not high on his bucket list. He didn't know what he'd been thinking coming into two degree weather practically naked. It really was—and he had to snort a little at the prospect—crazy. He crossed his arms over his chest in an effort not to freeze to death and began to walk beside the balustrade, looking down into the dirty streets that wound out and around like the tails of a dying rat king. When he'd run out of his makeshift theater in order to avoid Harley hurling herself at him and crying into his reluctant shoulder, there had been an odd moment where he'd passingly considered throwing himself off the side of the building. Not because he was suicidal, but just to see what would happen to him if he survived. A curious being at his very core, he had wanted to make an attempt at replicating the results of the Joker's trauma, to find out if it might somehow change him too.

Because the Joker had most certainly changed.

It had been too much to ask to suffer in solitude, and suddenly he was not alone in the rain. Harley burst out of the roof's door with a loud howl that sent a dog barking in one of the buildings across them, and then lonesome cries were echoing all throughout the city, least of all Harley's, which was the loudest of them all. He just sighed and didn't say anything even when, sobbing into her palms, she came to stand beside him. The Scarecrow hadn't paid her any mind when she had been making a nuisance of herself during the Joker's recovery, and since she was a noisy women at her very core, now wasn't much different even if she_ was_ wailing in his ears. If he'd wanted, he could have tied her up, pumped her full of toxin, made her scream with emotions that he wanted so much to understand. If he'd wanted, he could have forced her misery to dissipate like it was nothing and turn it into cold, hard terror. But he didn't, and any urge he'd had to do so quickly disappeared when he realized it would be fruitless. Harley willingly associated with the single most depraved and, ostensibly, terrifying mind in all of Gotham—maybe in the whole country, maybe in the world—was all but tortured day in and day out for it, had been to Arkham, had fought the cowl, and through all of it had remained virtually unchanged; fractured in her finished state. Perhaps it was true what they said-that fools knew no fear. Because if she'd known anything, she would have known to be _afraid._

He took a sideways glance at her and wondered offhandedly if the Joker had hurt her. Her blonde hair was disheveled and looked quite near to knotting into dreadlocks, but that was more from the fact she'd been languishing on a dirty linoleum floor for the past few days, only rising once or twice every few hours to take care of things Jonathan genuinely had no interest in. Her clothes were dirty and she smelled—he wrinkled his nose and shifted slightly away when the rain only seemed to make it worse—a little ripe, apparently because those rare times that she removed herself from his floor had not been in order to take care of her personal hygiene. And he couldn't see her face from behind her nail-bitten, bruised-knuckle hands, but he suspected it only looked as sickly as it had the day before. He suspected that if the Joker ever decided to take a swing at her, then he wouldn't touch her face. He'd probably _want _to see her expression, _want_ to see her in pain, _want_ to watch her watch him hurt her, because that's the type of man he was. Scarecrow tilted his head back and sighed into the drizzle. In the street, a truck blared and he heard children laughing as they ran through a red light, disrupting traffic.

Then again, maybe he was wrong.

After a long period of not-so-silence, Jonathan gave in and decided that ignoring Harley was maybe a little bit immature. He considered patting her on the shoulder, but he quickly realized that he didn't like the idea of touching her. She was so unclean in her emotion, in her love, that, childishly, he didn't want it to rub off on him. But it wasn't as though he could hold it against her. She was labeled insane—legitimately so—but she wasn't in her heart a malicious person, and it showed.

The Joker, on the other hand, was not so divinely flawed.

He was rotten to the core.

Yet, after that frankly disturbing display on the Joker's part, Jonathan had to wonder. Jonathan did not know the Joker—how could he possibly—but he what he did know was that the Joker was not nice. He was so far beyond cruelty, so driven by impulse and frivolity that it was a wonder he was capable of emotions _at all_. But that…_scene_ had almost been tender in a way. In a skin-crawling, vomit-inducing, walking-in-on-your-parents way, granted, but tender nonetheless.

Crane had also never known the Joker to be so insistent about keeping a secret. He seemed more like the sort to keep one just because he knew it would make everyone else's life more difficult, rather than simply being a necessity to him. But whatever had happened between himself and Batman that night, it had done something to him. As strange as it sounded, something was _wrong_ with the Joker, and that knowledge came without a bit of irony.

"Would you please be quiet?" Crane snapped when Harley let loose a particularly obnoxious wail into his undeserving ear. He'd never really condoned nor condemned hitting women, but for a moment he almost sympathized with the Joker. "You're interrupting my train of thought."

He jumped when she threw back her head and cried out as loudly as her voicebox would let her before it popped right out from between her lips, and he spun around in horror when he swore he heard a_ wolf_ howl somewhere in the distance.

"Harley, Harley, listen to me," he said, and after a moment of deliberation he cringingly put his hands on her shoulders and pulled her closer. It didn't matter to him that he was already wearing gloves and was undoubtedly quite safe—it was the principle of the thing that was corrupted. "You need to be quiet. Do you understand? Do you want the whole city to know that we're here? If someone phones the authorities about the disturbance, what do you think will happen us? To the Joker?" His voice dropped to little more than a whisper. "They'll move him. And if they move him in his condition, he will probably die. That's why you need to reel in these…_" _He looked her brusquely up and down. "...these _emotions _of yours and _quiet down_. Understand, Harley?"

After a few soft sobs, she lifted her head out of her hands. It took the sum of all of Scarecrow's will power to not hurl himself away from her in revulsion. Her make-up was smeared all over her face like someone had taken the business of face-painting a little too seriously, and the drizzle had plastered loose strands of hair to her face like something out of a swamp. Her blue eyes were puffy and red, tears making dark streaks down both her cheeks, and there was a steady stream of mucus coming down her nose and over her quivering lips. The woman stared up miserably into Jonathan's face, and he did his very best to look sternly back, and then after a few breathless hiccups she nodded and looked pathetically at her feet.

"S-sorry…"

"Good." He let go of her, and as nonchalantly as possible he pulled off his latex gloves, meaning to dispose of them later. "Now wipe your face," he said. "It's disgusting."

"Sorry…" The woman did as she was told, taking lifting her stained t-shirt high enough that he could see her pale stomach—riddled with old, half-healed bruises and dark knife scars—and she wiped her face off clean against the filthy fabric. She caught a few stray sobs as she did it, and he saw the tears leak in one side of the flimsy cloth and out the other, but when she lifted her head again, she looked at least decent. Her eyes were still red, cheeks flushed, her lips quivering, but it did nothing to detract from her appearance. In another world—one in which Crane could actually bring himself to care about the secondary sexual characteristics of other human beings-she might even have been pretty.

"Well?" he said. He carefully reached forward and plucked a few strands of hair still stuck to Harley's face, putting them gently behind either ear. "Don't you feel better now that your face isn't awash with your own bodily fluids?"

"Yuh-huh," Harley sniffed, giving him a shaky and ingenuous smile. She wiped her eyes with the ridges of her palms and nodded. "Thanks, Professor."

"Indeed."

Harley went off to the balustrade and stretched her arms out over it. Now that he thought about it, this was the first time she'd been outside in a while. He smiled wryly—and it was raining. Of course it was. Wasn't that just like the world? The woman folded her arms and looked out at the city, just as Scarecrow had been doing only minutes before. After a while, he joined her at her side, and took a sideways glance at her. Now that she was done bawling, she looked relaxed. Almost serene in a way. Strange, since he'd never known her as quite that well-balanced an individual.

"He'll almost certainly pull through, you know," he murmured. Harley glanced at him quietly from the corner of her eye. "There's really no need for you waking up the entire city over a cause that is far from lost."

"I know," she laughed. Her voice was scratchy and it hardly sounded right. "He just seems…I dunno…different, I guess."

"It's not a bad thing, Harley." He looked down, caught a glance of her frail and pretty fingers, crooked from being broken too many times. "He couldn't possibly treat you any worse."

"Don't say that! If you knew him like I did, you'd know he was really sweet." The woman put her elbows on the balustrade and rested her head in her hands. Now, she ignored the city, and instead stared wistfully at the sky that there was no way she could see behind the rainclouds. She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her arm, and Jonathan took a precautionary step back, expecting her to explode in a hailstorm of female hormones. But she didn't. She just looked up miserably and then, forcing a smile, she said, "I love him, ya know?"

Scarecrow wanted to roll his eyes, but really, she was so sincere in her affections that it just didn't feel right. He wasn't exactly above being vindictive and pointlessly nasty, but treating Harley like that, for one reason or another, left a bad taste in his mouth. "Rest assured," he murmured, "we're all quite clear on that."

"And you know, I…I'd love 'im no matter what happened to him." She bit her lip and squeezed her eyes shut and he could see her straining against herself, trying not to buckle, not to cry. "B-but something's wrong." Harley's misery swirled into anger and then her eyes were on the city again, burning with resentment while her entire form shook, not with rage it seemed, but her own fragility. "It was him—that Bat. He _did_ somethin' to him. I can just tell. But I…I can't…" The weakness in her won out and tears started surging in her sky-blue eyes once more, and they were wiped away by the soft wind and gentle rain in the moments before they fell. Her hands went over her face and into her hair, knotting with the knots until they disappeared into a mess of pale blonde, tugging and tugging as though she was trying to get something out of her—to pull it up by the roots. "I can't do anythin' about it…!"

She was about to cry, about to collapse, about to give in once again, but honest to goodness, Scarecrow just wouldn't have it.

"Get a grip, would you."

The woman looked up in surprise, but Scarecrow just continued in irritation, not even looking at her. "The Joker can take care of himself, and in fact, he seems quite proficient at it," he said, his voice rigid and reprimanding like a school teacher's. "He doesn't need you bawling your eyes out over him every twenty five seconds, and frankly, neither do I. So perhaps it would do you well to grow a thicker skin, Harley. You benefit no one as you are now, least of all yourself. The Batman exists everywhere in this city. He's in everything. Do you really think you're any match for him like this?" The man looked at her, with her dirty clothes and matted hair, with her emotions and her hopeless devotion, with her flushed cheeks and reddened eyes, with her feeble everything, and couldn't help but what it was in her that made her that way. "Who do you suspect you'll be able to protect when you're this _weak_?"

Harley twitched as though he'd physically wounded her, then drew her hands out of her hair to look at them. She stared for a little while. She flipped them over, gazed at them as though they were hardly even hers, and then she curled them tight and clenched them into fists.

"Y-you're right," she said, softly at first, and then get so loud that she may well have been declaring it to the entirety of the city. "If I just keep cryin' all the time, how am I gonna be able to break that stupid bat's stupid neck the next time I see 'im! I've gotta stay tough." She punched the air, and the clumsy momentum of it sent her spinning in a small circle. When she stopped, she was grinning up at the man as though she'd, in that brief moment of disorientation, found enlightenment. "I've gotta take care of my puddin' no matter what! Or else what's the point?"

Jonathan let out a breath through his nose and answered wryly, "That's a girl."

Harley looked up once, then looked away again. She pulled her fingers through her hair, coming out the tangles with her nails. "You know, Professor," she said, "I don't think I've thanked you for takin' such good care of us."

"Think nothing of it. It's not as though I had much of a choice," Jonathan pointed out, but Harley ignored him, probably because she believed that wasn't true. She leaned back over the balustrade, trying to get a better view of Scarecrow's face. She went out so far-her torso hung out over air and pigtails becoming tousled about as they pointed streetwards-that if he'd so much as brushed against her, she would have fallen and smashed her head open on the asphalt.

It bothered him that, even as he thought such things, she merely said, "An' you've been so nice to me…"

This, Scarecrow would concede to. Though it hadn't been his intention, he'd been surprisingly comfortable with humoring Harley and all her little quirks. "Indeed," he murmured. "I can imagine it's been quite a while."

"Since what?" Harley asked.

He looked down at her from behind the murky haze of his glasses and said gently, "Since someone was nice to you."

The woman giggled—the short bursts of laughter were interrupted with the frail meagerly remains of hiccups and despair, but by and large, they had disappeared.

"Everyone's nice to me!" she exclaimed, hopping back onto the safety of the roof. "It's 'cause I'm so sunny! Don't ya think?"

"Mhmm…"

The quiet that came between them after that was an amicable one. It was almost a little surreal to Jonathan, as friendships and the like were commodities he simply had no dealings in. But, though he thought of himself as too self-relient and and sufficient to even consider such things, that brief period between them was a comfortable one. A shame that Harley was such a chatterbox that it only lasted about a minute and a half.

"Professor," she said, destroying the lull the Jonathan had drifted into with her high-pitched voice, "can I ask you something?"

He'd intended to just ignore her until she went away, but then he'd foolishly let his eyes slip down to hers. When their gazes met, he could only sigh in acquisition. "I suppose I can hardly stop you."

"Have you ever been in love?"

A bizarre question, and completely out of left field, but he supposed it was one worth considering. Jonathan tilted his head back to try and remember all the people in the world he'd thought of as more than mere guinea pigs. It only took him a few seconds—it was a short list.

"No," he replied somewhat tersely. "I'm afraid we are not all as deluded as you, child."

"Oh. Well, that's too bad," Harley said. It sounded like she meant it. "Well, it's a scary feelin' sometimes." She smiled at him warmly. "You'd like it."

He snorted. "Quite."

There was a crack of thunder somewhere in the distance, and the drizzle began its slow transition to a downpour.

"I'm gonna go back inside," Harley announced. "Mistuh J's probably lonely without me, anyway." She wiped her face of the rain, and squeezed some water out of her shirt. As though the Joker could have possibly cared less about the state of her. She beamed brightly at Jonathan as she turned away, her big, white smile reflecting in the dim silvery light that came from between the clouds. "Thanks for cheerin' me up, Professor. I don't know what I'd do without you!"

"Oh, I'm sure it's not too far beyond you."

Harley laughed, though it was impossible to say whether she'd genuinely understood or not. With a wide, arcing wave, she bounded back into the building. The door closing behind her slammed at the same time as thunder rolled again, and below the streets began to empty out as a torrent began to come down in waves. In minutes, Jonathan Crane was the only one outside for miles, as though every living creature in all of Gotham had left him to the silence, and the city, and his many, many thoughts.

* * *

I love how, with these Bat fics, there's always a chapter where I just suddenly know what to do for the rest of the fic. It's just too awesome. This makes my life infinitely easier, because now I have a semblance of direction, whereas before I just had a vague idea, and will probably make things far more coherent for you as well. I suppose the tradeoff was that not much happened in this chap. But fear not! I'll hopefully be able to get the next chap up within the week, so look out!


	7. Chapter 7

Heeeeey a chapter of substance! Thanks everyone for all the comments and everything! I appreciate every one, and I hope i can live up to whatever expectations you may have. Thank you all!

* * *

Time passed slowly in Autumn. Jonathan had always thought that—it was as though the planet slowed to bring the cold back, as if the task was too difficult if it didn't, and wore it out too much. That autumn, however, was quite different in that, instead of spending the majority of it down in a freezing cold basement, tinkering with this apparatus or that until his fingertips were raw and hands frozen, he spent most of it in a lukewarm white room, being little more than the perturbed observer to a series of events over which he had no control.

The two clowns apparently thought he was running a half-way house or something of the like, since neither appeared to have any inclination to leave. In the week between now and the time the Joker had regained consciousness, the two had made themselves quite at home, and they had settled into something akin to a routine. Needless to say, this was almost entirely Harley's doing.

Joker hadn't really warmed up to Harley in the last week, but he had clearly grown more tolerant of her. When she wanted to kiss him, he let her, and when she suggested something, he nodded and agreed. Half the time, Harley looked truly drunk on happiness, and it carried over into her interactions with everything: the doctor Scarecrow had wired up in the room, the occasional mouse, the furniture.

It was almost enough to make Scarecrow want to kick her out. He studied fear, for heaven's sake. He wanted people to cower when they were so much as in his general vicinity, not turn to dripping masses of smiling goop. If he'd known his actions a week ago would leave her this perky, he would have refrained from opening his mouth at all. The longer she stayed, the brighter it made things—Mr. Abbey's reaction to the fear toxin was even getting less and less pronounced the more Harley chatted his ear off during her spare time—and such conditions simply weren't conducive to his studies. But really, he reminded himself bitterly, there was nothing he could do. He couldn't even scare them away.

Jonathan blew into his palms, getting a bit of feeling back into them before he continued jotting down little notes on a thin clipboard at Mr. Abbey's side. It was quiet, for once. The Joker was pretending to be asleep, and Harley was reading some sort of romance novel with rapt attention, biting down on her bottom lip and squealing with delight every now and then.

Scarecrow couldn't help but frown a little when he looked at her. Apparently, the woman had no apparel of her own, so she'd been running around in Jonathan's clothes for the last week. Sadly, it wasn't as difficult for her to wear them as one would think—much to Joker's amusement and Scarecrow's consternation, if it weren't for the fact that Crane was a great deal taller than Harley, his clothes would have fit her quite comfortably. It did nothing for his sense of masculinity—and he hadn't even known he'd had such a Freudian thing until then—to find that he was so slight that his figure was actually analogous to a woman's. What was worse, Jonathan only had a few suits—unlike the Riddler or Joker or even Two-Face, he simply had no interest in wearing clothes custom made by some sweatshop in Italy. Whenever some money came his way, he spent it first on toxin ingredients, then on any new equipment he needed, then books, then food, and then, far down at the very bottom of his list, clothes-which was unfortunate, as now that he was sharing his wardrobe with Harley, he was quickly running out of things to wear.

Harley giggled and brought her legs up to her chest, a smile spreading across her lips. She didn't at any point notice she was being observed. Jonathan drummed his nails on his clipboard lightly as he gazed at her, his thoughts irritable, and then he glanced at the Joker. He resented how serene the man could look, lying there quietly with that perpetual smile as though everything beyond his sphere of existence was irrelevant.

One had to wonder how the two clowns could afford to act so carefree. Whether they knew it or not, Batman was still out there, and though it worried Crane to think it, he was more dangerous than ever. The last few days had not boded well for the rogues of Gotham. Most of the city thought the man had gone on some sort of hiatus—even the Batman, they believed, was human—but the likes of Crane were not so naive. Though Batman continued to fight crime, as he always had, there was something quite different about the way he carried it out. He didn't leave his tell-tale marks, didn't drop off his catches at Arkham or the penitentiary as had once been his policy. When he was done with them now, he just left them where he'd found them, and if they weren't lucky enough to have someone come across them, then God's speed. His most recent victim—strange to use that word: 'victim'-had been discovered no later than the day before, beneath some tipped-over garbage cans on the other end of the street. At first, the authorities weren't sure who the man was. His face had been broken with such utter dedication that they'd had to use his fingerprints to identify him, and merely pray he had some sort of criminal record. Lucky for them, he had. He was none other than Julian Gregory Day—the Calendar Man. And it looked like he'd been run over by a truck.

Though he would live, it would take months for a full recovery, and the citizens of Gotham were still wondering who could have possibly perpetrated such a violent crime against a criminal who was in himself little more than a joke. No one even considered Batman to be an answer.

Scarecrow was not so sure.

And whatever had happened the last few days, the only one who had any insight into it was lying down no more than a few feet away from him, and if he was going to find out anything about it, there was really only one thing he could do: he needed to make Harley leave. A trying task, considering her senseless devotion to the Joker made it impossible to pry them apart with anything less than a crowbar, but he was sure he could manage. Even if he could get her out only a few minutes, it would be enough. All he wished was that he'd be able to speak to the Joker in private, no matter how briefly.

He flipped to a new page, jotted down a few more notes, then pulled the paper away from the other sheets, folding up and placing it in his breast pocket. Quietly, he stood up from his stool and put his clipboard down on the chest of his living experiment, causing Mr. Abbey to jolt and let out a thin moan. Quietly—merely because his gait was slow and slinking, and was therefore always quiet—he approached Harley. The woman did not lift her head from her book even as he came to stand right in front of her, so he waved his hand in front of her in order to call up her attention, but to no avail. Jonathan frowned and crossed his arms over his chest, contemplating his options. He could have snatched the book away from her, but that was really more trouble than it was worth. After a few seconds, he decided to forego the whole bells and whistles—after all, simple was always best. His clothes hardly even rustled as he leaned down onto one knee in front of Harley. For a second, he just looked up wryly from beneath his eyelashes, and then said the only thing that he could think of.

"Boo."

The woman let out a cry of surprise and hurled herself backwards out of her chair, her book flying up as she toppled onto the floor before falling and hitting her smack-dab in the center of her brow. In the corner of his eye, Crane saw the Joker start shaking as he tried to withhold his laughter.

"Don't do that, Professuh!" Harley yelled, rubbing her forehead where the book had hit her. "You scared the bajeezus outta me!"

"I'm sure you'll forgive me," he said, and it admittedly wasn't much of an apology. He got back onto his feet, and neglected to offer Harley his hand as he did so, more out of general indifference than outright malice. "Would you mind running an errand for me?"

The woman perked up instantly. "Sure!" she said as she clambered upright, rolling the sleeves of the shirt she was borrowing back up to her elbows. Her face clouded when she caught the Joker in her peripherals. "But…"

"He's sleeping," Scarecrow said. "You'll be back before he even notices you're gone."

"I know, but I've gotta keep 'im company."

"I'll be here." He gave her a small, placating smile. As he'd suspected, she hadn't even noticed the hollowness of it, and returned a smile of her own. "You needn't worry yourself. He won't be alone."

After a few seconds of staring at the Joker in thought, Harley looked back at Jonathan and nodded.

"Alright, Professuh," she chirped. "What can I help ya with?"

Perfect.

"There's a convenience store a few blocks away from here," he said. He took out some money he'd folded into his pants pocket and the paper he'd put into his coat, took Harley's hand gently, and put it all within her palm. "Take this, and buy all the supplies on that list. When you leave the building, turn left and keep walking straight. You'll hit the store eventually. Understand?"

"Sure thing!" the woman exclaimed. She took the list and the cash and shoved them into her pocket, then pulled her red and black jacket out from under the chair that still lay with its back on the floor. She pulled it on hastily, and in a few moments was heading towards the door. "I'll be back in a jiffy. And if puddin' wakes up before I get back, tell 'im I love him, okay?"

"Of course. Farewell, child."

"Buh-bye, Professuh!" Even when the door closed behind her, Crane could hear her humming happily as she went down the stairs. It was only when he couldn't hear anything that he approached the Joker.

Scarecrow righted the chair Harley had been sitting in and moved it closer to the Joker's side before setting it on its feet and sitting down. After about a minute of silent waiting, the Joker opened one eye cautiously, and when he found they were genuinely alone (save for Mr. Abbey, of course) he let out an exaggerated yawn and stretched his arms out above his head.

"What's up, Scary?" he groggily, though Jonathan didn't know why he bothered faking it when he obviously knew the other man was aware of his farce. "Want me to tell you a bedtime story? I know a few good ones. Do you know the one about-"

"I want to talk."

The Joker raised one eyebrow. He looked up and down Scarecrow briskly, and then threw his head back to laugh. The cackle fell a little flat—he still wasn't fully healed. Not that telling him as much was any kind of deterrent.

"Hoo boy, I know that face," he snickered. "It's adult time, isn't it? You don't want_ a_ talk, you want_ the _talk. I never pegged you as the kind to express that type of unwarranted concern, but frankly, I'm touched." Before Jonathan could answer, he pulled himself upright on the bed—so quickly that it must have hurt, even if he didn't show it—and from that moment on, all he did was sneer. "You haven't left the hive since I woke up, and that's just not like an Arkhamite. Something's keeping you cooped up in here." His green eyes glittered. "Something's got ya spooked."

"That's quite an astute observation on your part," said Scarecrow evenly, "but nevertheless wrong. I'm being cautious. After what Batman did to you, I'm not sure I want to test him."

"Why? Are you _afraid?_"

Jonathan held in the urge to sigh. He knew any slip on his part would merely call Joker's attention to any perceived weaknesses, and he'd spend the rest of the day under constant verbal assault without having gotten any closer to finding out what he needed.

"No," Jonathan answered. "But I can't continue my research if I'm dead."

"True, true. So then? What is today's topic of in Crane's Corner?"

The older man folded his hands carefully in his lap. "…I wasn't being completely honest with you."

"So you do want a bedtime story! Well, just come up here and sit in my lap, Jonny-boy. Let me relay to you the wonders I have seen."

"While you were unconscious," Jonathan continued, "I gave you a dose."

There was a pause in which the clown stared at the other man with silent intent. "…of heroine?"

_Of course not,_ Jonathan wanted to say, but thought better of it. The Joker knew precisely what he meant by his phrasing, but even still, for some reason unclear, he was giving the other man a chance to get off the hook unscathed.

Jonathan did not take that chance. "Fear toxin."

The Joker, having his cryptic offer of kindness rebuked, said nothing. And his expression was a strange one—practically serene as he reached for the IV on to his side side. He probably had the intention of using it as a swinging implement, but Scarecrow had moved it just out of his reach the day before because all he ever did was fiddle with it. The clown then looked at the doctor himself, and with a thin simper, and reached out his hands. He stretched his arms as far as they would go, his dark, chipped nails a hair's breadth from Jonathan's neck, and then without saying anything, he pulled them back and set them in his lap. And then he chuckled.

It took all of Jonathan's willpower to hide his relief.

"Well, I'm still in a bit of a state," said the Joker with a wide grin, as though he wasn't at all bothered by the other villain's transgression, "and you're rather far away, so I'll refrain from killing you just to hear you explain."

"Need I really?" Jonathan stood up. "I imagine it's all quite self-explanatory." He moved slowly around the edge of the bed, the Joker eyeing him cautiously the entire time. "It's not in my nature to leave questions unanswered. I was interested. I wanted to see—I wanted to _know_." He stopped on the opposite side to which he'd started, the same side as Joker's broken arm. "But…in spite of the clear risk involved, I was disappointed in the end. You hardly reacted."

"_Hardly?"_ the Joker said. He kept on grinning, but his voice was filled with bristled questions.

He was curious. That was good.

"You _did_ say something," said Jonathan slowly. "One thing. You mumbled it and I could hardly hear you but…." He leaned down and dropped his voice to a thin whisper. "You said 'stay.' Why do you think that is, Joker? Could you try remembering for me? Who were you telling to stay?"

"You tell me, _Doctor_ Crane." The muscles in the Joker's shoulders tightened, but not because he was tense or nervous or even upset—it was an animal instinct, a nonverbal but exceedingly real threat. Jonathan knew that this would quickly get out of hand, that he'd gone far over the Joker's limited threshold of mercy, but he was compelled to go on. The Joker smiled still, but the way his many straight teeth glinted with inviting white made it seem more like he was baring his teeth. "_Illuminate_ my unenlightened mind."

Crane leaned further down, bringing himself easily within the Joker's striking distance, and yet only in the back of his mind did he care. "That night…the night I found you…I was not wrong in assuming your wounds were more than just what the physical body can comprehend." His glasses glinted along their rims, half in shadow, half in light. "Did Batman tell you that he was tired of your little 'game?' Did he tell you he was done with it? Did he tell you he was done with _you?"_ One of the Scarecrow's thin, uncanny smiles began to creep over his lips. "Could it be that that's the one thing that the Joker truly fears? Could it be…you're afraid of being alone?"

The Joker snatched Crane from behind the ears and yanked him as close as physically possible, his nails pulling up skin and bringing up blood. Jonathan could feel the clown's breath falling on his face, hot and wet, smell the sharp sourness of it, as though the Joker's caustic nature had polluted his innards to reflect it.

"You _are_ a clever boy, _Doctor_ Crane, I'll give you that," the clown snickered and his words fell into a curling whisper. "But you're not half as smart as you think you are. Keep your pointy little nose out of things you don't understand, because you can't _possibly_ understand. You can't understand Batman, and you can't understand _me_." He shoved Jonathan away and sneered. "But I do love to watch you try."  
Scarecrow stumbled back and had to catch himself on the second bed in the room to keep from toppling over. He'd hit a nerve—hit a nerve in the_ Joker_. Which meant he'd been right. The Batman had probably done just as he'd deduced. For a moment, as pulled himself back onto his feet, he felt quite smug about it—a very short moment, mind, because he quickly realized that this was something he didn't want to be right about.

"It's true, isn't it?" he rasped. "He's sick. Sick of this city, sick of us, and sick of you."

"You really are one of _them_ aren't, you? A psych, through and through. You think you can get all the answers because you ask all the questions—but you always forget about people like me, who don't _have_ an answer. Kind of pathetic that you're still even looking."

"You're right about me having questions. But do you think I can't tell the difference between one who doesn't have an answer, and one who refuses to give it up? You're not enigmatic—you're evasive."

"Is that supposed to_ provoke_ me?" the Joker said contemptuously. "Even a charlatan like you should know better than that."

"I know enough to tell you that if something doesn't change immediately,_ very_ bad things will happen." Scarecrows eyes narrowed into thin slits. "It would be absurd to say that someone like the Batman was ever anything close to a picture of mental health, but whether he was or was not is largely irrelevant, as what he is now is far, far worse. I imagine you don't stay current with news that doesn't involve yourself, but I shall give a brief overview of the last two weeks, for both our sakes. The media is under the impression that Batman has gone on some sort of break because his usual modus operandi has changed, but he's been treating criminals much the same way as he treated you that night. It's gotten bad enough that people think there's some new crime boss on the loose, disposing of wayward consorts in shady deals."

"If that's so, then what makes you think it's Batman at all?"

"I've been on the receiving end of his 'justice' often enough to tell," said Jonathan. "And you would be a fool to tell me I was wrong. I may not know the full details surrounding what happened between you two, but whatever it is, I know you're the cause. And you might even be the cure as well."

"Me?" Joker guffawed. "The cure? For _Batman?_" He threw his head back, and even as he clutched his ribs in pain, he howled with laughter. Jonathan tried to cut him off, but his laughter only increased, and when he tried to speak over him, the Joker was all but screeching.

"You're afraid of him disappearing!" Scarecrow all but yelled, refusing to be ignored, refusing to be beaten by a laugh. "But at this rate, he'll be miles out of your reach in no time, Joker. He's leaving you _behind._"

His last word fell on absolute silence, making him recoil from the sound of his own voice. The clown regarded him with a dark distance, his breaths shuddering as though he was holding in thin giggles.

"Say what you like, Doc. But you don't know him like I know him. Trust me." The Joker looked away from Crane and tilted his head towards his lap, his eyes focused on air, his smile a smile that had nothing inside it but teeth. "He won't get far."

Wondering and waiting did nothing. Hoping and praying did nothing. Staring out the window and wishing and thinking that maybe he was wrong was not enough: the answer was always the same.

* * *

The Joker had disappeared.

There was nothing strange about that. The Joker always disappeared after a good enough beating. Maybe for a week, maybe a month. Sometimes longer, but he always came back, better than ever, simply because he was _impossible_, both in the petulant child sense and the cosmic determinator sense. But the circumstances were different now, and for the last two weeks Bruce had slept with both the radio and the tv on, always snatching up the nearest newspaper and tabloid whenever he went outside, waiting with something caught between hope and despair for someone to write somewhere-anywhere, he couldn't care less about credibility or proof—that the Joker was dead. That they'd found his body in an alley, or washed up on a river bank, or crushed against the asphalt of some street. Because even if it meant he'd killed a man, if it meant he was a murderer, a monster, at least then it would be a certainty. And at least the monster that made him would be gone too. But this horrible place of 'not-knowing' was more than he could stand. And he didn't want to be responsible for whatever it was the Joker would do now that he thought he'd been betrayed. Betrayed-that sort of twisted logic could only have made sense to someone as disturbed as the Joker. And, as Bruce was beginning to realize, himself, as every single day he woke up with a stomach filled with guilt, praying for that split second of absolution.

It didn't look as though it would ever come.

But he was desperate. Every night, it was all he thought about when he donned the cape and cowl—all he was capable of. For the last fourteen days, he had not taken to the streets with the intent of fighting crime. This was a search mission. A rescue. Whether it was the Joker he intended to rescue, or himself, he couldn't say. For all he knew, they might well have been one and the same.

Yet, there was always _someone_ in his way. Someone to interrupt his search, someone to obfuscate the matter at hand, someone to—to—he stopped and glanced down at his fingers. Beneath his gauntlets, he could feel the deep lesions in the skin over his knuckles burning, flesh cut through nearly to bone, broken from hitting too often and too hard.

A part of him thought, _something's wrong with you_, and another answered back, _isn't that obvious?_ And another part had to wonder when he'd started thinking in chunks like this. Like he was—

There was a police siren, a long and listless lonely sound, and Batman looked up. He had been crouching on the ledge of a building, hiding between the thin stone sages built on either side when he'd started to daydream, and by now he didn't know how much time exactly had passed since the moment he'd begun. It had started to snow at some point in the night, and the white flakes had begun to settle on his shoulders and his cowl, covering him up turning his fibers into frost. They fell softly, slowly, and while Gotham was always dark and miserable, the snow almost made it look right—almost made it look pure. But by the time it alighted on the buildings and touched the ground, it was black as tar and just as dirty as the rest of them.

Batman stood up straight, the snow sliding off his back and a wind whipping about his cloak. He'd come to this place for a reason. He'd managed to scrounge up a few modicums of information on the Joker, and while he was working on just this side of nothing, what info he did have had pointed him here. Though the chances of this being the right place were slim to none, he couldn't _not_ look. Before he gave up, he would need to exhaust every option—and he'd already long exhausted himself.

Maybe it was because of that that when his eyes fell upon a pigtailed blonde skipping along the sidewalk with a red and black jacket on, his heart leapt. He knew this was impossible, that it was too good to be true—because all good things were too good to be true—but logic had no effect. He didn't care about chances or statistics—how they were slim to none, how he was imagining things, kidding himself. Unimportant. This was his chance, this was luck, this was—

_Fate? Do you believe in that?_

Maybe he did. And if he didn't, maybe he would start.

Batman narrowed his eyes and stood quickly as the woman began to get further away from him. In moments he was following, a black shadow moving between rooftops, silent and invisible. His eyes stayed trained on the woman, trying to make out anything that would identify her. If he could just see her face—her eyes-then he'd know for sure. Then he'd—the woman slipped on the thin layer of ice building on the sidewalk, and though she threw out her arms so she could catch herself, and fell flat on her backside. He would had disregarded her then as just another woman, just a regular person who was thoughtless and a little bit clumsy, but then she threw her head back and she laughed—after that, there was no question in his mind.

It was Harley Quinn-and if anyone was to know where the Joker was, then it was her.

Even before he landed on the ground behind her, she must have sensed his presence, because she went dead still half way into lifting herself off the ground. Maybe she'd known he was following her all along.

If that was so, he had about one second before she bolted. He tried to leap forward and grab her, but all those restless, uncertain nights had begun to catch up with him, and his foot crunched loudly on the snow before he even got close. That little noise was all it took.

Harley took off down the street as though she'd heard a starting pistol, her feet completely steady on the frost that had downed her just a second ago. But there was no way Batman was going to let her get away.

* * *

"Where is Harley?"

It was Jonathan who was the first to ask, even though both he and the clown had been thinking it—they just hadn't wanted to talk to one another until that moment. The man flipped his wrist and pulled up his sleeve to look at his watch. "She left almost an hour ago."

The Joker had taken to ripping pages out of Harley's novel and folding them into origami animals to entertain himself, though it seemed Scarecrow's little chat had put a bit of a damper on his spirits. He shrugged lazily. "Maybe she got lost."

"How could she possibly? It's a straight line from here, for heaven's sake."

"She might have gotten distracted. She'll do that, you know." The Joker snickered. "Not much of an attention span on that one."

"Unbelievable…"

The Joker glanced at the Scarecrow, his red lips pulled in what was in theory a smile, but looked far more like a snarl in practice. "Listen, Scary, if you're so worried about it why don't you go out and find her?"

The former psychiatrist frowned and looked down at his watch again. There was no possible way that Harley had gotten lost, and she certainly hadn't gotten distracted by anything between the lair and that store, so his bet was that she'd either gone somewhere else, or something had happened. Whatever it was, he knew he was now compelled to find out. "Perhaps I will."

As he shrugged off his doctor's coat and pulled on something with a little more substance, the Joker gave him a skeptical smile.

"I gave her a fifty dollar bill to buy those supplies with," he explained. He wrapped a scarf around his neck and put on his hat. "The total sum of the cost of all two dozen items on that list would be equivalent to roughly nine dollars and thirty two cents. I refuse to be made short forty dollars because of that child."

"You know, I really thought you were brighter than that, Scary." The clown shook his head, disappointedly while Crane headed towards the door. "You're kind of not, though, huh?"

"Indeed. Well, I'm off." Jonathan paused for a moment as he stood by the door, and then turned around briefly to glower. "Please don't destroy anything in my absence."

The Joker, in reply, threw a paper plane he'd made in the other man's direction. He chuckled when it hit him in the face. "Jonny, I would not even dream of it."

Scarecrow didn't try to get any more assurance than that. He opened the door and went down the dark, musty staircase to the first floor. He frowned when he saw the glitter of snow falling through the yellow streetlights flickering down and down the way. That made the whole ordeal that much worse, but if he was going to find Harley he'd just have to brave it. The Joker had seen him leave—and that simply meant that there was no going back. He steeled himself and stepped out of the safety of the building, the door creaking thinly on its shivering hinges as he opened it, and then jarring shut when he pulled it closed behind him.

* * *

Harley was faster than Bruce had expected. The clothes she was wearing were noticeably long and he was sure she would trip, wearing those raggedy shoes of hers, but whenever she skid on the ice it just seemed to make her even faster. Thoughts streamed through his head as he pursued her, each one far too quick to pick out, but the one that kept coming back again and again and again was that he couldn't lose her. He had to know what she knew. Anything less than that wasn't an option, wasn't even worth consideration. And he wouldn't have someone like Harley get in the way of that.

Batman heard himself snarl when she turned abruptly into an alley, causing him to twist around and skid on his claws—nails—before he went in after her. He heard the iron groan of metal being pulled, the scrape of steel against brick, and it was enough to make him skitter to a halt. Less than a second later there was a thin hiss, then just ahead of him, steam burst out of a broken pipe in thick, white plumes. With an angry growl he stepped slightly back and observed his surroundings as best he could. It didn't do him any good. Between the whistling of the pipe and the way the steam billowed upwards and upwards before dispersing, he couldn't tell where the clown had disappeared to. It was like she'd pulled some sort of magic trick.

But he knew her. There was no way she would just—

He ducked out of the way when a lead pipe came out of the darkness and nearly ploughed straight into the top of his skill. Harley burst through the steam as though she didn't even feel it and took another wild swing at Bruce, but his reflexes got the better of them both and he sent her tumbling backwards with a swift kick to the stomach. He was sure he heard a bone give way beneath his heel, but Harley seemed largely unfazed.

She coughed and touched her side lightly, but was on her feet again in a second. No surprises there. It wasn't like she wasn't used to being kicked.

The woman glared at Batman for a moment, her hands gripping the pipe until they shook, her eyes flicking over him while she tried to figure out what to do next.

"Don't come any closer," she warned. Her voice was soft, trembling, giving away the emotions that swirled behind her angry eyes. "Go home, you stupid bat."

"Harley…" Bruce took an experimental step forward and Harley poised herself at the ready. Her stance went rigid, her every muscle readied for retaliation.

"I'm serious. One more step and I'll…I'll kill ya! I'll really do it!"

Batman almost smirked at how she seemed to second-guess herself as she said it. He could almost figure what she was worried about. "You wouldn't, Harley. What would the Joker say if you killed me?" He slid closer to her, knowing that if nothing else, that would get a rise out of her. It might get her to slip up, to give away information she hadn't intended. "Don't you think he would-"

"Shut up!" It ended up being worse than he thought. The woman brought down the pipe with enough force to send a crack rippling up the wall of the building beside her, and it was like the whole foundation shook. If it weren't for her horrible aim, she might have really killed him.

"You…!" she howled as she attacked. "Do you know what you did to my puddin'?" Tears started to well up in her blue eyes, mixing with the snow that melted on her cheeks. All that did, though, was serve to blind her, and all her swings fell on thin air. "Do you know what you did to me? You always act like you're the good guy, but you're just a bully! Stay away from us! Go away. Go someplace someone wants you, you stupid…! Just-just…!"

Batman grabbed her by the wrists and forced her roughly to the wall, his hands trembling. Why was she being so difficult? She had to tell him. She had to. Or else he might really—he would really- "Where is he, Harley?"

"I'd rather die than tell you!"

"I said, where is-"

He stumbled back when she brought the top of her head up into his chin, nearly making him bite his tongue off. Blood poured out from between his lips and down his throat, made thick streaks on his chin and fell upon his suit, and in the darkness it looked pitch black. A silence separated the hero and the villain in the alley, setting each of them worlds apart. Harley stared at Batman, her chest heaving, drops of red mixing with her hair and sliding down her forehead. So much blood, and yet he didn't feel any pain—his mouth was numb. But his insides—they were _burning. _Because he knew she wouldn't tell him. She wouldn't give the Joker up. She wouldn't let Bruce be free of this endless torture he'd been suffering all this time. His hands curled into fists, and in spite of white snow and black blood and blue eyes, his world went red._  
_

How dare she—

Blindly, he grabbed her by her head, his claws digging into her scalp.

-did she think she could keep him from knowing?

Harley cried out and lifted the pipe into the air, ready to drop it down on his skull.

Did she think she had the right to keep him from knowing? As though she could_ stop_ him from finding out—

He pulled her forward and her pale eyes went wide. For a moment, they were so bright.

-as if _anyone_ could stop him.

He saw a shadow shift across her irises, something black and horrible. Her pupils shrunk to pinpricks—

Batman pushed all his weight down onto her neck.

-like she'd seen a monster.

She opened her mouth, looking like she was going to scream.

And then there was a snap.


	8. Chapter 8

Worst person. Right here. I'm sorry. If there's more than one person who still cares (and thank you for caring) please forgive me for what has been a year long wait. This story has been horribly neglected, so I hope you'll forgive me if it takes some time to get back into the groove of it. I'm sorry this one is so short, and maybe a little bit odd sounding! Hopefully the next one will be better!

Anyway, thank you for your patience! Your reviews are always appreciated.

* * *

Batman thought it was the sound of thunder. He thought the falling snow had melted into rain, and a storm had started building in the distance, and that the crack was just the sound of thunder. But if that was all it was, then Harley would have yelped. Her sky-blue eyes would have gone wide, and she would have yanked herself from Batman's grasp in sheer surprise. At that moment, though, she was still. Snowflakes continued to alight upon her cheeks, but they didn't melt. Instead, they built up against the pale blue-white of her soft skin. Her grip loosened on the pipe she had been holding only a moment before, and it hit the alley floor with a clank. Her body was a sudden dead weight in his grip, as though she wasn't even bothering to hold herself up anymore. Her eyes were still open, Batman's black blood caught in her eyelashes and streaking her cheeks, but their blue was that of a stagnant pond, and not of a bright blue sky.

Harley looked right at Batman, and she saw nothing.

It then Batman realized that there was no storm. There was no crack of lightning, and no call of thunder.

It was her neck. The snap had been her neck.

Batman held onto her, even as the warmth of her skin was slowly filled up with ice, and her fingers began to curl back towards her palms as she was frozen solid. He couldn't think. His senses were limited solely to the salty taste of blood, and the harsh roar of the city outside the alley mouth. Beyond that, there was nothing. Just darkness spreading outward and away.

Shaking, he tried to make her wake up.

"Harley."

His fingers knotted in her dirty hair when he gave her a little shake.

"_Harley."_

A snowflake landed on her iris, and she didn't blink.

All the warmth went from his body and his hands went so numb that he couldn't hold onto the woman anymore. He tried to grab her back up in vain, to set her upright like a mannequin in a dark shop window, but when she fell she fell hard, and she landed with her legs bent beneath her in a way that would have been painful if she could have felt it.

Batman looked at her. He looked at her frozen wounds and her limp form and her cold face. Her big, long-lashed eyes were still open, but the cold had started to cloud them over into a veil of white. A part of him wanted to say her name again, but it stopped in his throat.

Harley was—

There was a crash from across the street and Batman turned immediately, not so numbed that his reflexes weren't strung taut. He looked out before him into the darkness, and his eyes zeroed in on a form lying on the ground, a trashcan tipped to one side and long legs splayed out on the ground. Pale eyes glinted in the lone streetlamp that illuminated the road, and like that, Batman saw him. He was not wearing burlap, and not carrying a scythe, but he was unmistakable all the same.

"Scarecrow."

Suddenly, Batman's thoughts lurched. He looked at Harley Quinn, motionless on the ground, and triumphantly he smiled. It was a nightmare. That was it. All of it—it was just a nasty dream, made of memories dripping blackest pitch. None of it was real. He hadn't done anything wrong. It was just a dream—he looked to the Scarecrow, who was trying to get onto his feet without slipping on the icy ground-and it was all his fault.

Batman moved.

…

Jonathan had just been walking, and that was all. He had gone to the store he had sent Harley to, only to find she had indeed arrived there safely only to forget her goods when she'd left. The teenager tending the checkout counter had been nice enough to give Crane the plastic bag full of things he really didn't care about, and he'd managed a snarl of thanks before going on his way. It was in no way a consolation prize, however. He was still no closer to getting back his forty dollars, and he had no idea where Harley could have gone with all the change.

He walked through the closest, darkest detours, ways that one would conceivably walk if they were blind or crazy or stupid—and Harley was at least two of the above—and was about to give up and go back to the lair when he heard a noise. Curiosity was known to kill cats in very creative ways in Gotham, but he had a decent dose of toxin on him and was in a pretty bad mood, so he moved down an alleyway towards the noise.

But then he saw Batman.

And then he saw Harley.

And he watched her body jolt and go still as she hit the ground.

And though, for a moment he was frozen, when his senses returned his first instinct was not to walk away with dignity, but to run. Never had he wished so keenly to be in a place that was _not here._ He didn't know what had just happened, but he was more than willing to assume the worst, and he knew he couldn't get caught by the caped crusader. Not this time. After what had happened to the Joker, he wasn't at all willing to test the vigilante's restraint, even if that meant leaving Harley behind. He'd bang her up a little-maybe even a lot, like the Calendar Man-but she was mostly harmless, so he wouldn't kill her. Jonathan doubted the bat would be that considerate when it came to someone who had actually been _diagnosed_ as 'evil.'

So, yes. Running was the way to go. Arkham was one thing, but death was another entirely. Too much to work for, too much to live for, and he could not allow himself to perish just yet. Certainly not at the hands of the Batman.

Considering all the people he had killed and all the people he had left to die, it had been almost foolish to expect karma would lie back and watch. Indeed, he had not even move an inch before he knocked right into a trashcan, sending sticky, caustic contents sprawling on the asphalt, and hit the ground with a thump.

The clang of the trashcan ringing through the alley was enough to make him go still, enough to draw out the evening a few extra hours in his mind, and then he realized it.

He was as good as dead.

He did not even get the opportunity to swear. All Scarecrow did was turn onto his back, glance up, and the Batman saw him, and he lunged.

For the most part, Crane was a skeptic. If something could not be proven, then it could not be real. All those deep, dark monsters that people imagined while in the throes of a toxin fit were simply that: imaginary. The real monsters roamed city streets in suits and masks, their faces false and smiles insincere. They were everywhere, and not one looked anything less than human, and to suspect creatures more monstrous than that existed under beds and inside closets was just absurd. But at that moment, Crane forgot that he didn't believe. He forgot why he had ever thought that it was foolish to fear the creatures in the nighttime. Not when he was looking such a creature right in the face.

Immediately he kicked back against the ground, trying to drive as much distance between himself and the bat as he possibly could. Crane's hand dove into his coat in search of his toxin, finding lint and stray papers, and choked out a sound of relief when his fingers happened on the container. He had meant to spray it, but he didn't get the chance. When he brought it out he fumbled, dropped it on the ground. When he picked it up it was upside down. He couldn't turn it over. He would drop it again. There was too little time. The Bat was too close, his hands would be around Crane's neck in seconds. Looking between his hand and the toxin, thoughts racing until they disappeared, he closed his eyes. As the space separating them thinned to millimeters, he thrust out his clutching hand.

He felt the shards splinter back into his palm heard a cry as glass bit into skin, but he only heard the actual smash a second later. And just like that, the alley was filled with fear.

Jonathan saw the vigilante—to him a creature of shadows and blood—reel backwards with a shriek. His hands were on his eyes, tearing at the mask that covered them, and if it weren't for the cowl he might have genuinely torn them out. The cry was so loud, so alien, that if Crane had not seen it coming from Batman's lips he would have thought it was the steel shriek of a machine falling to pieces. Batman twisted and turned, and then did something completely unprecedented. He _ran away_, his screams trailing behind him in the darkness.

Jonathan had hoped the toxin would serve as a distraction, but this—this was unprecedented. Whatever hallucinations the toxin evoked in Batman, never did they seem to provoke actual terror. Usually, Batman became violent under the effects, lurching forward at Crane who he mistook for some unseen foe. Occasionally he didn't react at all beyond a quiet, "No."

So what was it Batman had seen this time that was so different? What had terrified him so?

He swallowed in an effort to calm down, and tried to focus his thoughts on much more physical matters. Crane looked down at his hand. He was lucky—the glass hadn't gone too deep. It was only a flesh wound. And though he wasn't completely immune to his toxin, he was more than capable of braving the effects after all the occasions he had accidently tipped a vile or sprayed himself in the face with the stuff. Even when introduced directly to his blood stream, all these nightmares he had seen before.

He raised his head to where he had first seen Batman standing, and sure enough, Harley was still lying there, completely unmoved. The upper half of her body was completely obscured in darkness, so he couldn't even tell if she was blinking awake or not. Only one way to find out, he supposed. He got onto his feet, picking glass from his hand with his fingernails and wiping blood off on his coat. His legs were shaking.

"Harley?" he huffed. He walked closer. "Harley, Batman is gone. Get up and give me my change so we can go back to your beau." He sighed when she didn't answer. That proved it—she was out cold. But it didn't look like Batman had hurt her too badly, so Jonathan considered her lucky.

The Scarecrow stopped at the woman's legs, which were buckled oddly under her, and prodded her shoe with his own. No response. He scowled down into her face, which was only half visible behind the snow and dark and her tousled up her.

"I can't believe you're making me do this," he mumbled.

Slowly, he got down on his knees beside her, careful not to expose his hands to the filthy of the street. He leaned his face down over her nose and listened with a frown. It had been a token gesture—he hadn't actually been expecting what he heard.

And what he heard was nothing.

His insides went cold.

Call the police, he thought instinctively. An ambulance. _Somebody_.

_Idiot._ Since when had he relied on those idiots? As though anyone would come—not for them. He was alone. He had to fix this alone. He felt for a pulse, listened more intently for breathing, but his hands were shaking too much to feel, his own heart beating too loudly for him to hear.

He pressed his palms over her body, panicked, searching for any indication of life, anything at all. He trailed his hands up her chest, her shoulders. What did he do? Her neck, it was—

_Broken._ Snapped like a twig. Her head dangled limp from her shoulders, barely connected, just suspended by the casing of skin that held all of her together. He tore his hands away from her and only stared. It took a moment to sink in.

Dead, he realized.

Harley was dead.

Batman had killed her.

It was then he realized the reason for his panic. He was scared because he knew what this meant—not only for himself, but for all of them. He pictured that terrible, shrieking thing the Batman had been before running out of the alley, and he knew—Batman was going to kill them all.

Even the ones like Harley. Even the ones who didn't deserve to die.

Jonathan looked up from the ground. His eyes searched the night for something, anything that could help him. That could help them all.

There was nothing and no one.

They were alone in the dark—except for the beast that was waiting out there, somewhere in the city.


End file.
